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If you've been on the internet in the past few days, you must've seen a million things being talked about, about horrific things happening to women around the world. The Cornell case, the Delhi case... what is it all?

It's just another piece of news. Just another story. “I am against rape.”

I believe it's not something we are against or something we need to display. Isn't it common basic manners? But then again, to be fair, what is basic in today's times?

The case of Cornell University is such:

A fraternity of seven boys allegedly raped a 20-something college student for seven hours straight. The woman was called Jane Doe to hide her identity. These boys allegedly coerced her into snorting ketamine, consuming alcohol and god knows what else, and raped her while she was incapacitated. This happened in October 2024, and no criminal charges were pressed at the time. Two of the men were expelled, while the others had to write an essay, and now the case has been opened up through a civil lawsuit.

The evidence claims that the boys texted on their Snapchat group that there was “free pussy” available.

It galls me to say it, but is that all a woman is worth? All that she is meant to be reduced to? All that there is left of her?

Inhumane doesn't even come close to describing this. Also writing an essay?! An essay? Because you were intimate with a woman without her CONSENT. If that’s the punishment for rape, are you gonna tell them to deliver a speech after murder? 

And then, not soon enough, it happened here.

A 17-year-old girl went to Delhi on her birthday with a friend. They went to Kalkaji Mandir, prayed, bought some chips and a bottle of water near the metro station, and then entered Aastha Kunj Park through Gate No. 7.

She apparently wanted to visit the ISKCON temple later that evening, so they decided to sit in the park for a while, eat something, and then leave.

They sat on a bench near the swings. And then three men approached them.

She later told the police that they looked to be around 30 to 35 years old. They grabbed her friend and slapped him. When the two asked who they were, the men allegedly said they were policemen and started questioning them about why they were in the park, telling them that they weren't allowed to be there at that time.

Then they took their phones. And separated them.

Imagine that for a second. You're seventeen. You're out with a friend on your birthday. Three grown men walk up to you, tell you they're the police, take away your phone, and suddenly you don't even know who you're supposed to trust.

The girl was frightened and apparently asked them to speak to her parents instead.

One of the men then allegedly called another accused, whom she identified as Asif, and asked him to take out a gun. She told the police that he was wearing a purple shirt and showed her what appeared to be a black firearm before putting it back into his pocket.

Then came the knives. They allegedly took her towards a darker, more secluded part of the park, where the three men sexually assaulted her one after another while threatening her with knives.

Afterwards, she told the police, the men asked her to dress quickly and brought her friend back. They allegedly returned their phones and ordered the two teenagers to leave the park. They also allegedly threatened to kill them if they told anyone what had happened.

So they left. And once they were outside, she told her friend. He called the police control room. At around 8:45 pm, the PCR call came in. The police reached the park and began the investigation. She was later medically examined at AIIMS.

The Supreme Court has now taken suo motu cognisance of the recent sexual-assault cases in Delhi-NCR and raised questions about safety in public spaces, including parks, roads, and public transport, and things like lighting, surveillance, and safety audits.

However, despite taking its own action, it has given guidelines to women to stay safe and to do college online, just so innocuously, because the country can't seem to control its men. Another sliver of freedom taken away.

Honestly, are we any different from Afghanistan?

Rights, freedom, everything given as part of being born in this nation, but girls are not supposed to use them because boys get hard-ons and cannot control themselves.

It is sickening, at the very least, to see such things happening with such ease because, whatever may have happened, it is the woman's fault.

Because she wore revealing clothes. Because she was eating Chinese on the street. Because she was asking for it. And because she was getting it, she should've enjoyed it.

But what happens when a three-month-old is raped by a doctor? What happens when an 80-year-old is raped by boys under the age of 18?

Or what happens when a dog is raped?

True, definitely it was their fault even in all these scenarios.

We talk about women's freedom and how powerful women are. Is this the power we need and want, and that we praise? Should we really be talking about rights and protesting if we can't implement them in reality?

Women empowerment, sure. But where do the feminists and the hyperfeminists and the civil men go in India when this happens?

All we do is keep shit.

What happened to the poor girl at RG Kar in Kolkata? Are we really just waiting for another Nirbhaya and then waking up? Weren't these enough?

Yes. If an MLA in an assembly can say “lie down and enjoy it” and people can laugh, I think we're already too far gone.

The Hindu, a newspaper read by aspirants for law, UPSC, and by general people, published a favourable front-page article for Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, a rapist, if you don't already know, and an apology from both of them is enough.

I question the system when this happens. I'm gonna get legal and technical, so I'm sorry if it's too much to grasp.

The Indian Judiciary operates under what is called the Golden Thread Principle in criminal matters.

The principle says that in a criminal proceeding, the burden of proving the case is on the prosecution. In simple terms, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the prosecution has to establish the offence.

This is largely why cases prolong for so long, and I assume it is one of the reasons the Kasab case went on for so long. Different story altogether, but still.

Except, the law knows how to drop this cloak when it wants to. Because this principle can be modified, mainly in dowry death cases.

If a woman dies within seven years of her marriage under circumstances that fall within the law of dowry death, and the required facts regarding cruelty or harassment for or in connection with dowry are established, the law creates a presumption against the accused.

The golden thread shifts. The State acknowledges that behind closed doors, a dynamic of terror can exist, and the victim can no longer speak.

The burden can shift. The accused must answer.

But if that same woman is violated, shattered, and left alive, the golden thread hardens into an iron noose around her neck.

Why is rape excluded from a total reversal of this burden?

Why, when the crime is sexual violence, does the law suddenly demand that the woman become the prosecutor of her own tragedy?

To seek justice for rape is to agree to a second violation. Doesn't mean you shouldn't. The rapist sits quietly on a bench, protected by the presumption of innocence.

He does not have to speak. He does not have to explain his actions. He simply sits, a passive spectator, while the woman is forced to stand before strangers and dissect her own trauma.

She must recount the incident over and over, and over again.

She is forced to paint the scene in agonising, scrutinising detail. How long did it go on for? How many men were there? Did you try to evade? Were you conscious? If you were, why didn't you scream?

She is made to relive the worst moment of her life under a microscope, her character assassinated, her memory picked apart, while the man who broke her sits in comfortable silence, merely negating everything she says with a shake of his head or a lawyer's objection.

The system treats her body as the crime scene, but demands that she act as the forensic scientist, the eyewitness, and the emotional martyr all at once.

In demanding a perfect victim to satisfy an unbroken “golden thread”, the law can end up ensuring that the only thing truly protected in a rape trial is the rapist himself.

And if you ask legal scholars why this disparity exists, they will point to the text.

They will tell you that a dowry death begins with a concrete, physical fact that cannot be disputed: a dead body, a marriage certificate, a history of harassment.

But rape cases can hinge on a single, invisible word: consent. And because consent is an internal mental state, a fragile thing that leaves no physical footprint, the law panics.

It falls back on Blackstone's old formulation: that it is better for ten guilty men to walk free than for one innocent person to suffer.

The law is terrified of a “he-said, she-said” scenario, terrified of a false accusation, terrified of forcing a man to “prove a negative” behind closed doors.

So, to protect the abstract concept of a fair trial, it chooses to sacrifice the very real, visceral dignity of the woman standing on the platform.

Modern legislatures try to compromise.

They write clauses into the evidence law stating that in certain rape prosecutions, when sexual intercourse is proved, and the woman states in court that she did not consent, the court shall presume absence of consent. But that partial shift only happens after she has already endured the horrors of the process. It does nothing to stop the gruelling reality of cross-examination.

It does nothing to change the fact that she can still carry the emotional and narrative weight of the entire trial on her back while the accused remains entirely unbothered on his bench.

We are left with a system that would rather let a survivor be picked apart by defence lawyers than risk making the accused explain himself.

It is a calculated systemic choice.

A law that protects the procedure at the absolute cost of the person it was written to protect is only in name, and a woman's life is not ink. It is a life.

And it shouldn't be the thing we keep forcing to break just to keep the golden thread intact.

I believe the law is all talk, no show when it comes to situations like these because, until there are strict implications of the law against rape, which is a grave crime in any country, I don't think we can come out of this spiral.

And I know I am too young to be talking about this or to question the law or make claims. But it is what it is. I use my democracy to its fullest. I am no different. All I am doing is sitting in my room in the comfort of my home as I write this. There's not much a citizen could do. And I agree, you can't make an impact at 17 on something so grave. But if I were to, I'd stand by everything I say.

There are over 2,06,000 rape cases pending in India, 90% of which will not see the light of day with a trial before this year ends; 2.3% of those that do will end in convictions, the rest in dismissals and acquittals, and god knows how many other countless other sexual violence cases persist, and the numbers around investigations, trials, and convictions are horrifying enough without even needing to exaggerate them.

Maybe we should stop blaming the woman and educate the man. We should stop pretending and teaching that a girl and a boy cannot sit together at school; why else am I studying in a co-ed? We should stop preventing normal platonic interactions and then later say "Oh, beta, get married and have kids"

Because it is fucking serious. Because it is a woman's life. A life.

And I genuinely don't know what it will take for us to start treating it like one.

I hope it happens sooner than we hope for it to, because it's only a matter of time till something gut-wrenching like Nirbhaya happens again and the world realises it is not all fun and games.

As ever,

Ambika