Source: Al Jazeera

In a country like India, where culture and etiquette are given high regard, there is also a section that has its hands dirty with the blood of women, a section that takes pride in buying & selling women harassment videos. Brutally cornered, harassed and raped women have been taped in these shameless videos which are being sold in Uttar Pradesh in less than 3$. The painful screaming of the women which fell on closed ears has been recorded ‘clearly’ in these video tapes to be watched & taken pleasure in. The marred faces of these women are also taped in these videos but could they tape the heinous crime of those men? Maybe or maybe not. Such videos cost from Rs 20 to Rs 200 (30 cents to $3) and are easily transmitted to the customer’s mobile phones in just a matter of seconds. This sickening trade, this lifeless business and this greed for money which has been started in the remote corner of India is slowly creeping its way up the ladder.

The question is why would anyone want to watch the re-runs of such a brutal crime which was inflicted on minors or a helpless woman? Why would one want to watch the boisterous men of India who clearly can’t control their animalistic self from doing such a crime? Why would one want to keep such videos in their phones & share it with others? Doesn’t this indicate majorly towards our patriarchal society? Isn’t it a high time that we end this patriarchy in India right from its roots?

In Meerut, a city in western UP, these rape video markets are in full access to the local people. The marketers keep in mind not to sell it to any non-locals in the city. One local man, who just stayed 15 km away from Meerut, in the village of Incholi, agreed to buy one of these rape videos and show it to Al Jazeera. Shawnawaz, who declined to use his full name, told that these videos are not primarily made to sell or to trade. These are merely made to blackmail the rape victims from making a compliant. There are these watchwords in this trade – a secret handshake – which let the sellers know that they seek rape videos, whereas these sellers also have the pornographic movies as well. Once these rape videos reach the phone of one person, they then spread like a raging fire in a jungle, through mobile phone applications like Whatsapp, where these are termed as ‘Whatsapp sex videos’.

There is a local at the village of Saharanpur in UP who admitted that he buys these rape videos and stores them in a folder in his laptop by the name of ‘pornography’. To our sheer shock, he claimed that he watches these videos because they give him peace of mind.

Mangla Verma, a Delhi High Court Lawyer, who works with the Human Rights Law Network, reportedly explained that rape is considered as an assertion of power by a man over a woman. After committing such a harrowing crime, the man has the audacity to even film the act and circulate it to the other people. Where has the humanity gone?

On this face of earth, where the philosophers talk about seeking motivation from nature, where the poets connote verses about beauty, where the painters try to infuse magic on the canvas of life with their brush and where the academicians & debaters verbally dominate the views of the people for better, but where really is this ‘beauty’ of nature when a helpless, desolate woman is harassed, cornered, beaten and evilly raped or killed? Where is our conscience when that woman is counting the last minutes of her life? Where are these debaters when that woman is shouting sense to those devils of the society? Where is the sincerity of the work of these artists & philosophers of nation, who claim to know beauty, when in reality that same beauty is being marred?

A dignity lost is lost forever. A trust gone is gone forever. But, one thing is  for sure, as long as there is life, there is hope. Here’s to all those women who are still fighting undeterred, determined to wipe this trash from the face of the earth.