Law of the Land, Rule of the Man

In 2011, when I was only 15 years old, I remember going on a late-evening walk with a male friend I knew from school. On this walk, two middle-aged men dressed in plain clothes approached us and began firing pointed questions: “What are you doing here?”, “Is this your boyfriend?”, “Why are you walking together at night?”, “Why are you walking on an isolated road?”

(For context, we were walking beside a bustling train station that simply had lower foot traffic at that hour. It wasn't as though we were scaling a brick wall into some desolate, abandoned corner of the city.)

The men, who claimed to be undercover police officers, made us feel dirty and criminal. They implied that the mere act of walking together and talking was somehow obscene and vulgar because we were young teenagers of the opposite sex. They looked menacing. One of them nearly struck my friend for being out with a young girl when he "ought to be at home." Everything about that encounter was frightening. As we were being interrogated by these "officers," a sinking feeling told me they could easily be goons masquerading as police to intimidate people.

That was the last time my friend and I ever walked together. Being shamed on the street triggered a deep sense of humiliation that we couldn't shake. We never wanted to be caught in a “compromising position” like that ever again. I have often thought about those men and whether they were actual officers because they never showed us a badge.

This memory came flooding back when I read about the gang rape in Aastha Kunj. On September 21, 2026, a 17-year-old girl and her male friend were cornered by three men in Aastha Kunj Park, Delhi. Posing as police, the men weaponized legal jargon to terrify the teenagers into believing they had committed an offense. They used every scare tactic in the book, systematically separating the boy and the girl. Once they isolated her in a secluded spot, they took turns raping her while the other two held the boy down. This happened in a public park. Please let that sink in.

The relentless barrage of news on sexual violence in this country has reached a critical mass. Try as I might, I cannot think of a single physical space in India where a woman hasn't been violated by a man. Yet the Delhi Development Authority saw a different problem altogether: they decided that public parks themselves were the threat. In their eyes, slapping a padlock on the main gate at 6:00 PM will dismantle the rape culture endemic to our society. Men and their visceral, misogynistic contempt for women are obviously not the issue; women occupying public space after sundown is. In 2026, this is the state's strategy for crime prevention: lock up the women so the predators can roam wild and free.

More women in India are educated, employed, and financially independent today than at any point in history. Yet despite every progressive leap we have made in claiming basic freedoms, this still holds true: if a man victimizes you, it’s your fault. The social penalty for being a female victim is almost always far harsher than the legal punishment for being a male perpetrator.

Let me walk you back in time to demonstrate this point:

2017: A 17-year-old girl accused ruling BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, his brother, and others of abduction and rape. In retaliation, her father was framed on fabricated weapons charges, brutalized in police custody, and killed. The survivor herself barely survived a suspicious car crash that claimed the lives of two of her aunts.

2014: Two Dalit girls, aged 14 and 15, were found hanging from a mango tree. Their family accused the police of refusing to initiate a search when they were first reported missing. While an initial post-mortem indicated gang rape and homicide, the CBI took over five months later and conveniently declared the deaths a double suicide.

1999: Model and bartender Jessica Lall was shot dead at point-blank range by Manu Sharma simply because she refused to serve him alcohol after the bar had closed. Sharma, the son of a former Union Minister, was initially acquitted alongside his accomplices after high-profile witnesses mysteriously turned hostile.

1996: Law student Priyadarshini Mattoo was raped and brutally murdered in her uncle’s home by Santosh Kumar Singh, a senior who had stalked and harassed her for years. Prior to her murder, she had filed five separate police complaints and was assigned a personal security officer who failed to show up on time the day she was killed. Santosh had repeatedly evaded police accountability because his father was a high-ranking police official.

1978: 18-year-old Rameeza Bee was walking home late at night with her husband after a movie. When her husband stepped away to use a restroom, police detained her and three officers gang-raped her inside the station. When her husband confronted them, he was beaten to death in custody. To cover their tracks, the police orchestrated a smear campaign, labeling her a prostitute and her murdered husband a pimp, even producing fabricated medical records and paid witnesses to claim she was soliciting clients.

1973: Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM Hospital, was sexually assaulted and choked with a dog chain by a hospital ward boy, Sohanlal Walmiki. The attack left her with permanent brain-damage. Sohanlal was never prosecuted or convicted for rape or unnatural offenses, partly because legal and medical definitions back then narrowly demanded vaginal penetration, and also because the hospital authorities wished to suppress details to "protect" her dignity. He served just seven years. Aruna remained in a persistent vegetative state for 42 years until her death in 2015.

1972: Mathura, a young tribal girl, faced false kidnapping charges brought by her brother after she decided to marry her partner. When summoned to the police station, her family was ordered outside while two constables assaulted her inside. During the trial, the courts weaponized her personal history against her; because her hymen was not intact and lacked fresh physical tearing, the court ruled that her past sexual activity implied immorality and sexual consent.

1907: Bai Galal, an impoverished lower-caste woman, was sleeping on a temple platform when two men gagged her, dragged her 200 yards down a dirt path, and gang-raped her. She managed to free her mouth and scream, attracting villagers and leaving clear physical evidence of a struggle. Despite medical examiners confirming semen, scratches, and torn clothing, the Chief Court acquitted the men. The judge reasoned that working-class women are accustomed to rough environments and should be capable of fending off attackers; because she didn't offer "real resistance," the court declared the assault consensual.

Over a century separates Bai Galal from the young girl in Aastha Kunj Park, yet the script remains the same.

We are still asking the exact same desperate questions: Can a woman trust the police? Can she trust the courts? Will her perpetrators receive a sentence equivalent in severity to the social and emotional sentence she must bear?

The answer is a deafening, furious no.

We do not have a justice system; we have an enforcement agency for male power. Every time a horrific crime breaks our collective spirit, politicians line up to promise stricter legislation. But laws are toothless when the men charged with enforcing them view women with utter contempt. A whole decade after legal mandates required female officers to record complaints of sexual violence, police stations still operate without a single woman on staff. Many stations remain entirely ignorant of this statutory requirement, with male officers stubbornly believing they have the right to process rape complaints themselves.

Women in India do not merely need protection from criminals; they need protection from the law enforcement officers sworn to protect them.

If a survivor gets any semblance of justice in this country, it is only because her family screamed loud enough to embarrass the state on national television. Without media uproar, without public rage, the system quietly buries the bodies. Why? Because the system is built by men, for men.

India operates on a patrifocal structure where male existence is sacred and female autonomy is a threat. This system grants older men or men of the same generation authority over female family members. Within this system, men exercise undue control over female sexuality and marital choices to safeguard household standing through socially advantageous marriages.

In his 1994 paper, "Hindu Men Talk about Controlling Women," sociology professor Steve Derne exposed the dynamics of this dominance. A 35-year-old shopkeeper, Sunil Gupta, explained why he kept his wife on a tight leash:

"Someone may see her going and coming on the road. He will come to me and ask, 'Where has she gone?' I will have to reply that I do not know. Then he will say, 'See, this man does not know whether his wife is roaming in the market or has gone to the cinema.'" (p. 210)

For Sunil, the problem is not merely his wife’s independent movement, but the threat it poses to his social reputation among other men. He fears public humiliation. He fears being perceived as weak and powerless within his own household. He commands authority over his wife to avoid becoming the subject of neighborhood gossip and losing his peer group’s respect.

Another reason to control women is that a woman's chasteness or modesty is closely tied to the reputation of an Indian family. Family reputation is essential because it builds the social networks and alliances necessary to secure employment and financial credit for men. Thus, a woman’s physical mobility outside the home is treated as a financial liability. Et voilà — women are caged inside the domestic sphere under the guise of protection.

Derne notes that street harassment or ‘eve-teasing’ is not accidental either; it is a calculated tool to remind women that the public sphere does not belong to them. In a patriarchal culture, male strangers take it upon themselves to police "unattended" women and force them back into their domestic cages.

This is our legacy. This is our history. Women are and have always been pawns in a game played by men to advance themselves. In chess, pawns are sacrificed without second thought the moment they obstruct a key piece. No one mourns a fallen pawn. This same cold indifference governs how society responds when a woman reports a crime committed by a man: "Her purpose is to serve a man, so what is she complaining about?"

We can reform laws, double the penalties, and install surveillance on every street corner. But until this culture recognizes women as human beings first and female second, there will be no justice, only curfew.

Cover: illustration generated with AI for Feministaa.

References

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