Few days ago one of our teachers asked us to comment on the idea of penalizing the crime of rape with death penalty. Unanimously the whole class agreed with it.

How can we not agree with it? Even the death penalty, which is the highest punishment awarded to any criminal seems lenient for what a victim has to suffer. The victim has not only been physically assaulted, psychologically terrorized , given lifelong nightmares of that dreadful moment, but she has also been forced to suffer daily, for all of her rest of life, with taunts and remarks made by society for no fault of her except being a women.

But we need to ask ourselves that whether it is only the offender who is responsible for all the sufferings of the victim or the society also has some hand in victimizing the wounded. Why has she to be treated like an ‘impure’ person? Why has she to be ostracized from the society or has to be pitied? We need to ask ourselves why ‘rape’ is such a big thing? Because she has been ‘deflowered’ or she has to get an abortion which may never allow her to be a mother again? It seems that as a society we see the role of women only as somebody whose purpose is to provide ‘pure’ pleasure of sex to male or as a machine that procreates and brings an heir to the family. Isn’t it so?

The point which this blasphemous article endeavors to put across to you is that the name ‘rape’ itself is used as a weapon against the victim and we need to do away with the offence of ‘rape’ itself. It should be put under the ‘grievous hurt’ category. It should no more be compared with murder as equating itself work as a post act accomplice. And when we can have the crime of castration as ‘grievous hurt’, then why can’t be rape?

The author is aware of the social condition of women in society and is not disregarding rape as an outrage, all he is suggesting is that the names like ‘outrage’, ‘blot’, ‘raped’, etc itself aggravates the troubles of victim.

The reader is requested to visualize, only for a few minutes, a legal and social system where there is no offence of ‘rape’. A victim is treated as ‘grievously hurt’ who may have to bear the consequences of the horrendous crime like a victim who has lost one of his/her body parts. But the victim is not stigmatized and is allowed to live rest of her life without any kind of taunts or remarks or ostracism. The victim is encouraged to get an abortion, in case of an emergency. There is also a provision of life long governmental care of child if the victim doesn’t want to raise the child herself. Even the problem of high under-reportage of the crime, which is just a fraction of reality, would be helped as the victim is no more deterred by society. Also, the offender no more takes non-reportage of his heinous act for granted.

It is submitted that the changing name would not prove to be panacea and still we would be requiring many other developments including changing the general notion about sex. We may need to do away with the idea that the honor of women resides in her body. We need to realise that women also has an existence excluding her body. But including ‘rape’ into ‘grievous hurt’ could prove to be the first step towards the egalitarian society which is urgently needed to emancipate women.