On a Saturday evening this month, an 11-year-old girl left her home in a small town in eastern India to attend a friend’s birthday party. She never returned.
According to police, the girl was kidnapped, raped, stuffed into a sack while still alive, and thrown into a pond by a group of men. Her body, covered in bite marks and bruises, was recovered the following morning — July 5 — from the trash-strewn pond in Baruipur.
The horrific crime is the latest in a long series of brutal sexual violence cases that remain tragically common across India. Official figures from the National Crime Records Bureau show that more than 80 rapes are reported to police every day. Activists say the true number is far higher, as many victims and families stay silent due to stigma, victim-blaming, and social pressure.
Deep-rooted patriarchy, misogyny, understaffed and poorly trained police forces, and chronic delays in the judicial system have fostered a dangerous sense of impunity among perpetrators. Despite India’s impressive economic growth and rising global influence, progress on women’s and children’s safety has been painfully slow.
In Baruipur, the girl’s 46-year-old father and other shocked residents watched as her lifeless body was pulled from the pond. “My mind is not working. I have not been able to think straight in days,” the father told Reuters. Indian law prohibits the identification of the victim or her family in such cases.
The incident has put Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under sharp criticism. The party came to power in West Bengal state for the first time only months ago, with women’s safety as one of its key election promises.
However, activists warn that changing the ruling party alone cannot solve the problem. They point to entrenched patriarchal attitudes in communities, lack of gender-sensitive officials in the police and judiciary, and the intersection of sexual violence with caste hierarchies.
India recorded 29,536 rape cases in 2024 — a number that has remained largely unchanged in recent years. Sexual offences against children, however, have risen sharply. Cases registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act reached a record high of 69,191.
Other Recent Cases
In the past month, two other horrific incidents have also drawn national outrage. In Rajasthan, a 12-year-old girl was abducted, drugged, and gang-raped over four days in multiple hotels before being rescued. Police have arrested 22 people in connection with the case. Separately, a 7-year-old girl in Ghaziabad, near Delhi, was raped and murdered, with her body dumped in the shaft of an under-construction shopping mall.
Karuna Nundy, a prominent lawyer who helped draft stricter anti-rape laws after the 2012 Delhi case, said no government has seriously tackled the root causes. “There needs to be a sustained effort towards changing behaviour at the community level,” she said. “It is crucial to recruit the right kind of police personnel and appoint judges who have a gender-progressive understanding of these issues.”
Nothing Has Changed
The 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi sparked massive public protests and led to tougher laws and fast-track courts. Yet more than a decade later, many activists say little has improved on the ground.
“Nothing is going to change simply because the regime changes. This is a deep-rooted problem embedded in our patriarchal culture, not just in West Bengal but across India,” said Satabdi Das, a gender rights activist in Kolkata.
The central government had promised to set up 2,600 fast-track special courts for sexual crimes by 2026. However, official data shows only 755 such courts have been established so far, including 410 dedicated POCSO courts.
In the Baruipur case, the victim’s family alleged that police response to the initial missing-person report was too slow. Locals eventually helped by reviewing CCTV footage themselves. A local police officer said an internal inquiry was underway to examine procedural lapses.
Extrajudicial Killings
Public frustration with slow justice has fueled support for controversial “encounter” killings, in which police shoot suspects in disputed circumstances.
In this case, one suspect was killed after allegedly snatching a weapon from a police team. BJP state minister Agnimitra Paul announced that four others had been arrested and declared: “The message is very clear from our government that we are not going to tolerate any kind of nonsense.”
Opposition leaders and human rights activists strongly oppose such extrajudicial actions. Lawyer and rights activist Vrinda Grover said these killings create a spectacle of instant justice but ultimately weaken the rule of law and give unchecked power to the police.
