But the tragedy of Shopian is the tragedy of all of India. The failure to register FIRs is one of the biggest problems that raped women face. The number of rapes reported in India is large enough — 20,737 women reported that they were raped in 2007, about six a day. That’s an 800 per cent increase from 1971, when the National Crimes Records Bureau first began to compile rape statistics. But the real number is likely far higher. One widely quoted (though hard to verify) estimate is that for every one rape reported, 67 are not.

Botched medical tests are also deeply pervasive during investigations into rape in India. Outright fraud, like in Shopian, does happen: the post-mortem report of a Dalit woman gangraped in the Khairlanji massacre was famously tampered with. But more pervasive are the subtle humiliations that medical examinations inflict. Pratiksha Baxi, an assistant professor at JNU, has done extensive work on how the Indian legal system deals with rape cases. She points out “even when not fudged, the fact that the doctor does the ‘two-finger test’ to check whether the victim ‘is sexually habituated or not’ is using science to do what is directly banned — pass judgment on the sexual history of the raped woman.”

The publicity given to the victims in Shopian — with names and lurid descriptions of the injuries published — was perhaps necessary to establish the most basic of truths: that rape had taken place. But it points to something that Indian law ignores: the insensitivity of the process, making victim and family relive the nightmare of rape. In a Rajasthan trial last year, the cross-examination did this quite literally. As a shocked Rajasthan high court later described it, the raped woman “was made to lie on the bench available in the trial court to demonstrate her posture”!

... contd.