How to write about rape, ‘poetic justice’, Bodh Gaya sex abuse case, Nikah Halala
The 3 September round-up of Note This: highlights from NewsTracker and more

Language and grammar matter tremendously when we write about rape. NewsTracker’s Meghna Anand curated 10 broad guidelines for Indian journalists to keep in mind from an extensive checklist for the Canadian media created by Femifesto, a Toronto-based collective “that aims to shift rape culture to consent culture”.
In I Think, where we capture public opinion on the news reporting of sexual violence in India, Judith Anthony, a teacher of Indian origin who is currently based in Washington D.C, says she feels she has to be “very careful” as a woman when she visits India. She says that the India media cannot afford to be “neutral” about sexual violence and should “take up the role of advocacy”.
Editor’s pick
“The day a rape is reported, it is published everywhere. A day later, the media move on,” says Nannapaneni Rajakumari, chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Women’s Commission. In an interview with Manisha Koppala, she gives her insights on the justice system and explains why it is important for cases to be followed up by the media.
Across India: news since Thursday
Further disturbing details have emerged about the reported sexual abuse of 15 boys at a Buddhist institution in Bodh Gaya, Bihar. Police say Buddhist monk Bhante Sanghpriye Sujoy not only sexually and physically abused his students — some as young as 6 — but also sent them out of state as sex workers. The parents of the children were reportedly paid Rs 1000 each to send the boys to the “school”. The Bihar government has now set up a team to inspect similar Buddhist institutions in the pilgrimage town.
The case has echoes of the child sex abuse and/or trafficking cases exposed in Deoria (Uttar Pradesh), Muzaffarpur (Bihar) and Yadagirigutta (Telangana). Gita Aravamudan in Firstpost points out that the children at the centre of such cases are “easy prey” since they have “no one to protect them”. She writes that they are failed not only by the law but by those who are entrusted to care for them.
Crime and punishment
In Jhunjhunu district, Rajasthan, the death penalty came served with a side of poetry. “Those who say rapes happen because of clothes, I want to ask them how do I make a three-year-old chid wear a sari” read part of an emotional poem written by judge Neerja Dadhich, who on Friday sentenced to death 22-year-old Vinod Kumar for raping a three-year-old girl. The sentence came only 29 days after the crime, reported the Indian Express. Four other convicts in Rajasthan have been sentenced to death for raping girls under the age of 12 since March.
In Chandigarh, three men were sentenced to life in prison for gang-raping a woman who had boarded an auto driven by one of them. The judge took note of how the rape created fear among working women and “the city as a whole”.
Rape culture
In Shahjahanpur, UP, a rape survivor died after setting herself on fire. In her dying declaration, she said she was driven to despair because the police refused to register her complaint and pressurised her to reach a financial “compromise” with the accused. She said she was attacked twice.
In Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, a woman has accused her father-in-law of raping her under the pretext of Nikah Halala (a controversial practice in which a divorcee cannot reunite with her husband unless she marries, has sex with and divorces another man).Five people have been booked, including the woman’s husband, father-in-law and two clerics.
Politics and sexual violence
TTV Dhinakaran, an Opposition MLA in the Tamil Nadu assembly, has called for a CBI probe into the sexual harassment allegations against an Inspector General of Police by a woman police officer. He criticized the government’s handling of the case, and claimed that the officer was being protected by the political establishment due to the “sensitive cases” being handled by him in the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC).
A story of ‘rehabilitation’
DNA has detailed the “journey” of a rapist “to a professional under Delhi police’s scheme”. Now a cook in a Chinese restaurant, ‘Neeraj’ is quoted as saying that when he was 15, “I had consumed liquor and raped a woman…When I was lodged in the shelter home, I made up my mind to earn my own money…” Incidentally, the juvenile convict in the Nirbhaya case is also reported to be working in a restaurant.
Read more
This roundup is curated from the RSS feeds of more than 30 English news publications from across India.
See a fuller list of rape and sexual violence cases reported today, and earlier this week.
Use our case filter to read reports on specific cases: #KeralaPriest, #RapeOfMinors, #Muzaffarapur, #PoliticsOfRape (use the dropdown menu in column A).
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