Hope is an unfamiliar feeling where violence against women is concerned. Even an appearance of change turns out to be just that, an appearance. In Bankura recently, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a vegetable-seller was raped by the young man of the house in which she was employed as domestic help. Since she became pregnant, the police, who had received a complaint from the girl’s father, and the neighbours, compelled the young man to marry her. Within forty-eight hours, her husband took her to a quack who carried out an abortion. He has apparently disappeared since, and his father, an influential man in the locality, has returned the girl to her parents. He allegedly dismissed the marriage, but said he would pay for the girl’s recovery. This is a complicated sequence of events. The initial act of violence is common enough, as is the power equation it exposes. Women working as domestic help are always at risk of sexual abuse. What is different about this incident, and reason for hope, is that the violence was not followed by the usual silence. The girls’ father went to the police and some action was taken.

It is the action that was dubious. The police and the administration worked towards an “understanding” and the neighbours joined in. The offender was made to marry the victim. Thus the violence was compounded by giving it social acceptability through marriage. The question of punishing the rapist by law was cunningly evaded. The offender’s superior social position ensured that he would not be brought before the law for raping a vegetable-seller’s daughter. For the girl’s family, such a marriage was compensation enough. It also saved the family from the stigma of harbouring a raped and unmarried girl. The girl herself, and the violence done to her, were never issues during the negotiations. She had to be erased, got rid of, in the most decorous way possible, with some lip service to justice. The whole point was to leave social arrangements undisturbed. There is nothing surprising about the outcome. By not bringing the rapist to justice, the administration helped in the perpetration of another crime. Without a complete reorientation of social attitudes, the law will remain helpless.