Police escort men accused of allegedly raping a tourist to a district court in Dumka, in India's Jharkhand state, on March 4. The attack took place on March 1; the woman posted a video describing what happened on social media.
In the past few years, other high profile rapes have called attention to the issue of sexual violence in India. And one of this year's Oscar-nominated documentaries.After the gang rape this month, an American journalist posted online about the"sexual aggression" he has witnessed on visits to India.
"We implicitly trust the survivors of attacks and while we allow anonymous reporting, we record what happened in extensive detail," D'Silva says."This helps us collect data and alerts us to a pattern of attacks." Lengthy trials, which D'Silva describes as"exhausting, emotionally and physically," likely discourage women from even reporting attacks.
This rapid response was possibly because of widespread media attention and the fear that the media fallout from the incident would affect tourism, but this speedy justice is seldom extended to the average victim of sexual assault in India, say the advocates interviewed for this story.