The recent abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 11-year-old girl in West Bengal has renewed national attention on the persistent rates of sexual violence in India. The victim’s body was recovered from a pond on July 5, a day after she went missing.
On a Saturday evening, the girl left her home to attend a friend’s birthday party but never returned. According to the local investigating officer, she was kidnapped, gang-raped, bundled into a sack, and thrown into a local pond while still alive.
Her body, covered in bruises and bite marks, was pulled from the water the following morning. Local residents and the victim's family alleged that a faster police response to the initial missing-person report could have saved her life, noting that locals had to source neighbourhood CCTV footage themselves to hunt for clues.
Police have since arrested four suspects, while a fifth suspect was shot and killed in custody during what authorities described as an armed confrontation after he allegedly snatched an officer's weapon.
The tragedy is part of a broader series of recent offences involving minors across the country. In Rajasthan, police recently arrested 22 individuals following the four-day abduction and gang rape of a 12-year-old girl in various hotels.
In Ghaziabad, located just 30 kilometres from India’s parliament, authorities are investigating the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl whose body was discovered in an empty shaft of an under-construction shopping mall.
Rights groups note that overall crimes against women have more than doubled since 2010, while reported offences against children have increased sevenfold, a trend partially attributed to under-reporting driven by social stigma.
According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India recorded 29,536 rape cases in 2024.
Furthermore, offences registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act reached a record high of 69,191 that same year.
Rights groups note that overall crimes against women have more than doubled since 2010, while reported offences against children have increased sevenfold.
Legal experts and gender rights advocates argue that legislative changes alone are insufficient. They point to deep-seated cultural misogyny, understaffed municipal police forces, and severe judicial backlogs as primary factors that foster a sense of impunity among perpetrators.
The crisis has also drawn political scrutiny. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently assumed governance in West Bengal after campaigning heavily on promises of improving women's safety.
While state officials emphasise a zero-tolerance policy, activists maintain that changing political leadership does not inherently resolve structural flaws within the police and judiciary.
Additionally, slow judicial proceedings have fuelled public support for extrajudicial actions, colloquially known as "encounter killings."
While some government officials defend these swift actions as a strong deterrent, human rights lawyers caution that bypassing due process weakens the constitutional justice system and fails to address the foundational societal and institutional issues driving the epidemic.
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