April 3, 2013
Women in India have been increasingly applying for gun licenses after the rape and murder of a woman in Delhi last December. The number of applications has doubled since the incident, when a young medical student was attacked by six men and assaulted with a metal rod.
Protesting rape culture in India
April 3, 2013
Women in India have been increasingly applying for gun licenses after the rape and murder of a woman in Delhi last December. The number of applications has doubled since the incident, when a young medical student was attacked by six men and assaulted with a metal rod.
Protesting rape culture in India
Indian police have reported an upsurge in the number of women applying for gun licences since the gang rape and murder of a Delhi student last December.
Police said most of the applicants are professional women who may feel more vulnerable since the attack on the 23 year old physiotherapy student as she travelled home from watching the film Life of Pi at a South Delhi shopping mall.
Campaigners for women's safety said they understood why women were deciding to take responsibility for their own safety when the police had failed to protect them, but they feared the move could backfire.
Police at Delhi's Gun Licensing Unit said applications from women had doubled since the December attack in which the victim was gang-raped by six men and mutilated with iron rod. She suffered chronic injuries to her abdomen, brain damage and a heart attack before she died in a Singapore hospital 13 days after the assault.
The scale of her injuries and suffering provoked an outcry throughout India, with protesters demanding urgent government action to reduce the rising number of rates and sexual assaults on women.
But according to the Delhi Police Gun Licensing Unit, more women have decided they may have to take the law into their own hands if they are attacked.
One officer, who asked not to be named, said while there were 44 applications to own handguns from women in the whole of 2012, they had received 21 applications in the last three months alone. He expected the total number of license applications to more than double in 2013.
"They don't give any specific reason for the acquiring of a licence but certainly the number of woman applying for gun licences is higher after Delhi gang rape compared to recent years," he told The Daily Telegraph.
The applications have increased amid rising numbers of reported rapes in Delhi since the December gang-rape forced the government to announce fast-track courts and tougher sentences for sexual violence.
Concern over the scale of sexual assaults on women has risen since December and spread globally with Indian tour operators reporting a 35 per cent decline in the number of women travellers visiting India. Many who cancelled holidays cited fear of sexual violence, noting the gang-rape of a Swiss woman who was attacked as she camped with her husband in Madhya Pradesh, and an attempted assault on a British woman in an Agra hotel who jumped two floors to escape.
Women's safety campaigners said the increased firearms licence applications was a reflection on police failure, but they also voiced concerns that carrying weapons made women less safe.
"It's the failure of the state to protect its citizens. Women in Delhi have been reduced to pepper sprays and martial arts. When the government tells we cannot secure you, the citizens will resort to measures to secure themselves. It's a sad state of affairs," said Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association. Guns, however "cannot guarantee safety and we have seen in what is happening in US," she added.
Courtesy: Daily Telegraph
