QuartzIn India, they’re finally calling it what it is: Rape
While it’s an improvement that more Indian women are coming forward to report rape, the police force is still apathetic. A sting operation conducted by an Indian magazine, Tehelka, revealed that many police officers thought the victims were to blame. “Only 1% of the cases are genuine,” says a police officer; while another says that most of the time girls get into strange cars voluntarily. When victims go to the police station to report rape, they are often jeered and mocked and actively discouraged from filing a report. If they do manage to file one, they step up to the next level of apathy, at the hands of medical officers.
Even until last year, AIIMS, the apex government hospital in Delhi, was not following standard operating guidelines for medical examination of rape victims or using standard kits for collection and storage of samples procured from the victim. Because of this haphazard collection and storage of crucial evidence, the cases often collapse in court and the perpetrators go scot free. In the last 29 years, conviction rates of rapists dropped from 37% to 26%, according to an editorial in the newspaper, The Hindu.