Senior BJP woman leader Nirmal Bairagi (center) comments on Haryana gang-rape case.
Highlights
- Haryana notorious for crimes against women, poor sex ratio
- Last week, gang-rape survivor was raped again by same men
- Rapes are as old as world itself, says woman BJP leader
Amid outrage over a
gang-rape survivor in Haryana being raped a second time, allegedly by the same men, a BJP leader assigned to protect women's rights in the state has said, "Rapes have been committed since this world was created."
"Our government is doing its job, but it will take time to find and arrest rapists," said Nirmal Bairagi, who heads the BJP's State Women's cell.
Last week, a 20-year-old
Dalit college student in Rohtak was abducted from outside her college, drugged and raped by five men before being dumped on a highway. Prosecutors say two of them had been arrested for raping her in 2013 and were out on bail.
"I will have to spend my entire life in constant fear of being raped again or killed," said the woman in an interview to news agency AFP. "My life will never be the same. I am worried about my family's safety," she said.
Her family has said that the men had warned that they would rape her again as "punishment" for not agreeing to an out-of-court settlement. Her father has also said she is determined to get justice though the state has failed to support her.
The BJP won Haryana two years ago and displaced the Congress. It was in Haryana last year that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a new campaign to improve India's child sex ratio - the number of girls born for every 1,000 boys - and gender equality through access to education.
Infamous for its selective abortion of female fetuses after illegal sex determination tests, Haryana marked an improvement in January, registering, for the first time in over a decade, over 900 girl births for every 1,000 boys.