The death of a 22-year old native girl in her rented flat at Malviya Nagar in New Delhi is unfortunate but along with the charge of ‘insensitivity’ that is being foisted on the Malviya Nagar police for not taking down an FIR with regard to the case, the same charge should also hold true of all the people who are sharing the photographs of the dead girl in various social networking sites and some local newspapers published here. When cases of people of the state being killed or molested takes place in another state of the country, there is an immediate cry of ‘injustice’ with a convenient collective amnesia over the state of the safety of citizens of the state and its women. People and groups will converge to call for justice while social networking sites will see pages being created where there will be rants. But something of the same nature happens in the state and apart from JACs that will be in agitation mode for some time, the matter dies a death in course of time. What lies forgotten is that the metros of the country are no safe place with rising number of crimes. A casual scan of the national papers will all too clearly tell the story of how cities and metros are becoming safe haven for crimes being committed: against natives of that particular state or against those coming in from outside as the workforce of the place or as students seeking education. The horrific Delhi rape case that left a 23 year old paramedical student dead and a nation stunned was in fact not someone from Delhi but someone who like the many people who go from our own state and from the region to other places for ‘something better’. She was from neighboring Uttar Pradesh. The point here is not to make light of the death of the 22 year old state native but to emphasize that crime is not restricted to who it is committed against and neither can the condemnation of the crime after seeing who it is being committed against.
Take the case of the Delhi gang rape incident, which led to people of all walks of life coming together to say that ‘enough is enough’. Tellingly enough, even as candle light memorials and rallies were taken out across most parts of the country calling for exemplary punishment of the six accused in the Delhi case last year, there was no whimper in the state. There was not a single group or civil society group that came forth then to add voice to the call going around the country then. This sense of convenience when something touches our own and total indifference for the very same thing when it happens to someone else is disconcerting and says a lot of our own role and the lack of responsibility and our understanding of the larger scheme of things. Rather, this clamor to play the role of the accuser plays out to an atrocious level where it leads to an indirect party of the very ‘insensitivity’ that we so easily accuse others of. The sharing of photos of the deceased in the Malviya Nagar case is in total bad taste and it cannot just be explained away by saying that the photos are proof of what may actually have happened with the girl. A social network is definitely not the forum to share pictures of such a sensitive situation as such forums are open and do not have any strictures of privacy. Those using the pictures to rally people sentiment and opinions on the case must realize that the family members of the girl are still going through a period of grief and mourning along with trying to get the Delhi police authorities to undertake due investigations. There is something called privacy that people need to take into account. Voices of support can be gathered without the use if the said photos in question. There must be a consensus too on building voices against crimes and on the lack of proper legal and police processes per se. Total silence when crimes happen to other people, other places is a poor reflection of our own accountability. By the same yardstick, we cannot question why there is a lack of interest when our own ends up as a victim of a crime in someone else’s backyard.