Editorial: Distressing...

The year is closing on an extremely distressing note, the kind which drains hope from mankind. It took a brutal gangrape of a 23 year old student in a moving bus in New Delhi to draw real attention to the insecurity which haunts women in our country. The collective shock of the country turned to shared anguish when the victim succumbed to her injuries over the weekend. And even as Sikkim was joining the nation in mourning and shame, it was served its own horror when a 14 year old was rescued from the forests of out-of-the-way Bharlang in East Sikkim. She had been missing for 24 hours, a period during which she was gang-raped and left to suffer the trauma on her own, hiding and cowering in the same forest where the reprehensible assault was perpetrated.
It goes without saying that in the Sikkim incident, the police need to deploy all resources at their disposal to round up all the four accused and prepare a watertight case against them. Two of the accused, one of whom is reportedly the same age as the victim, are still absconding. Their arrest has to be priority as far as the law and order agencies are concerned. The police can even consider releasing photographs of the two accused in newspapers published from Sikkim and Siliguri because this would be the general area where they will be hiding and can be ferreted out from. Given the nature of their crime, especially in light of the public anger over such deeds, it is unlikely that they will receive asylum anywhere once their involvement is known.
All this is for the police to deliver. What is of even more importance is the care of the victim. She has suffered a violation which demands the strongest condemnation and even as Sikkim condemns the incident, what she requires more urgently is therapy, not just to recover physically, but also psychologically. She has to be extended psychiatric assistance which does not usually reach victims of sexual assault. The laws do not provide for such attention, and while informed doctors would automatically refer victims of such abuse to psychiatric counselling, this is not necessarily always the case. It should be. All victims need professional counselling, even more so when they are so young of age and have suffered such an inhuman attack. Not just the victim, but even her family needs counselling. While we may know of such crimes, no one really knows how to handle the fallout. The victim and her family are also similarly handicapped. They need to be reached out with empathy. No family should be left to suffer such pain in isolation. The conflicting emotions and shock and trauma can leave very permanent effects not only on the victim but also her family. To ensure that the vile perpetrators of the attack do not continue to psychologically haunt the victim, proper and professional counselling should be reached to the victim and her family.