The rape and murder of a nine-year-old Dalit girl in Delhi’s cantonment area have not sparked the kind of outrage that is normally expected in the aftermath of such a horrific crime.In today’s episode of ‘Arfa ka India’, The Wire‘s Arfa Khanum Sherwani asks some pertinent questions as to how the caste and class of a victim in such crimes play an important role in the way India reacts. Although Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had met the bereaved family, the incident has not really caught the imagination of the nation as it did in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya incident, where the victim had been described as “India’s daughter”. The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder have ignited a discussion on gender justice in the country, culminating in the enactment of the Nirbhaya Act.Sherwani asks whether India would have reacted with such muted response had the victim been an upper-caste girl/woman with education from top schools/colleges in the country. It has now clearly emerged that since the victim, in this case, is a Dalit, it has also gone against in her family’s favour from getting justice and building a huge movement expected after such horror. The mainstream media too, like it always did in such cases, and more recently in the case of Hathras gang rape, has also glossed over the issue, without giving the kind of attention it required.However, The Wire‘s Seraj Ali and Mukul Singh Chauhan met the family and spoke to them exclusively. Freelance journalist Meena Kotwal, who runs a Youtube channel called ‘Mooknayak’, has been on the ground following the issue and spoke to Sherwani to shed light on what had actually happened and the status of the police investigation.
