On Thursday, August 22, 2013, a gang-rape of a young girl in the Shakti Mills complex of Mumbai was reported. There has been justified media pressure. Many panelists and anchors have insisted justice be done. Many have said this is horrific and Mumbai was never like this. Not quite. A few years ago there were two very public crimes against women reported from Mumbai which got unending news coverage which led to seemingly similar outrage.

On New Year’s Eve, 2007 a young woman was molested at the Gateway of India. She was at the Gateway with a friend of hers. A photo-journalist who happened to be at the Gateway at the time clicked pictures of the girl being molested and her molesters, and the incident made the headlines the day after. Further investigations revealed that she was molested and groped by no less than a crowd of 20, all caught on camera. Twenty people were arrested by the police at the time. Despite the media attention, the case was shut down within a month because she didn’t want to pursue the matter and returned to America.

The second incident took place in Mumbai exactly a year later, again on New Year’s Eve, when two women were molested by more than 40 people. The incident took place outside a five-star hotel in Juhu. The two women had just stepped out of the hotel. They were manhandled and molested on the street, 100 metres outside the hotel. It is still not clear how many of the 40 people caught on camera were arrested. One of the victims, an NRI had come to Mumbai to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Hindustan Times even carried pictures of the assailants, while they were molesting the two girls. When one of the victims spoke to CNN IBN she said that while she and her cousin were helping the police investigate the case, she was dismayed at how the incident was misreported by the media and by the media attention it had received. She also said that she was surprised by how people kept clicking pictures of her and her cousin, but did not help them. On being asked why she didn’t want to press charges, she said she simply wanted to forget the incident.

If two cases caught on camera cannot end in convictions or justice of any sort, it’s rather naïve to think anything has changed.

NDTV had done a follow-up news report on the Mumbai Juhu case two years after it happened and found that no case had been filed and only one person had been arrested. I decided to visit the specific police stations which these cases would fall under the jurisdiction of to find out how far the cases had progressed. This is what I learnt.

I first went to Colaba police station to enquire on the status of the Gateway of India case. At the time, it had been reported that three people had been arrested in connection with the incident. The constable outside the police station directed me towards “Bade Saheb”, someone named Jadhav. After listening to what information I was looking for, “Bade Saheb” without even looking up at me said, “Madam, ye to bahut saal purana baat hai. Uska abhi kya karna hai?” (Madam, this case is many years old. What do you want to do with it now?). He also told me that he didn’t know anything about the case since he was new to the department. As per his version, everyone at the department was new – since people get transferred in police stations every three years. When I questioned him about the FIR or documents related to the case, he said that they won’t have any copies in the system or in manual records. While there’s a person who takes care of records in the police station, he wasn’t present there and neither was “Bade Saheb” aware of his whereabouts. On being questioned further, I was asked to leave.

Juhu Police Station was the next stop. Upon informing the police constable, Mahesh Choudhary, that I wanted to know about the status of the 2008 molestation case outside Juhu Marriot – I was pointed to a cabin. According to the police inspector, they had “a Writer, Jhadekar, who keeps all the records. He sits in that cabin. But the case that you are inquiring is an old one. The papers must have been transferred to some court where the case must be going on. And there must be a Xerox copy if an FIR is filed but it’s unlikely that you will get a copy”. Out of curiosity, I asked the inspector if he was aware of the case or any people arrested following the incident. His answer was, “I have no clue”. The Writer (keeper of records) of course wasn’t there and had the long weekend off, unlike the rest of us.  I called the station two days later on a Monday, and was asked to come in to meet the writer – a Shailendra Ghiwar, not Jhadekar. When I reached the station and explained to Constable Choudhary why I wanted to meet Ghiwar – again – he asked me to wait outside, disappeared inside for a while and then emerged to tell me that I couldn’t enter the police station and that the cops were too busy preparing for tomorrow’s Iskcon Janmasthami celebrations to answer my questions.

As provided under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, it is necessary that the police register every complaint of rape as soon as they become aware of the same, without any delay. And for a “cognisable” crime such as murder, rape, rioting, dacoity, etc. the police can take notice of them directly, register an FIR and begin to make inquiries. Yet, this is the state of affairs in police stations. The people in-charge at the police station are not aware of cases such as these which have taken place under their station’s jurisdiction as recently as five years back. Neither do they have any documents or FIRs to refer to. There is no way to find out whether either case is being pursued in the courts or how many people were arrested.

Also, while it is not concomitant that the State must press charges on behalf of victims, the State has the wherewithal to press charges whether a complaint has been filed by the victim or not.

Is it any wonder then that the rapists in the Shakti Mills incident went back to their daily routine and upon being arrested said that they saw no reason to hide, since they never thought the victim would report the crime? Even rapists and sexual predators know that the way the police and the State function in India, they can walk free and attack again – because unless the victim presses charges, no one else will be bothered to bring them to book.  Why does the responsibility of pressing charges, fall on the victim? And if she doesn’t (and return to her country like the victims in Juhu and Colaba did) will the perpetrators of such sexual crimes walk free?