The ideology behind ‘nameless’ rape victims

The media must not name rape victims; the decision to come out must be taken by the victims themselves

The nonstop media coverage of an 18-year-old girl who was gang raped by the snake gang at Pahadishareef in Cyberabad and its video recording is being criticised by media critics and women’s organisations.

CV Anand accepts that channels aired the taped video and that they took a stringer of a TV channel into custody. He was booked under Sec 66(A) and 67(A) of the IT Act. Anand appealed to the media to not reveal the identity of the victim as she might face social stigma.

When questioned about how the video had leaked, the accused replied that with the advent of Whatsapp and other messaging apps, it was difficult to stop such things from happening.

India’s laws prohibit the disclosure of the identity of a rape victim and those guilty of doing so could be sent to prison for up to two years and fined. Rape shield laws have protected victims of sexual assault to ensure that victims recover and heal without public criticism.

Even the victim of December's fatal gang-rape in Delhi -- an incident which sparked international outrage and prompted the government to amend laws relating to rape in India – was not named publicly, until her father decided to do so.

The gang rape in Cyberabad last year was the first case to be booked under the Nirbhaya Act, where justice was pronounced in a span of four months and the identity of the victim was not revealed.

Writing on her Facebook page, one of the victims of a similar incident in 2003 slammed the media for eschewing the human element of the story and focused instead on sensationalising the story, which served little purpose and turned the incident into a kind of sporting event.

“Ethics is damned!” she said.

As a culture, we have a prurient interest in exactly in minute details. And the media, in the name of giving us what we want, has been happy to supply us with much of that. If the 23-year-old Nirbhaya is able to shame the media into changing its culture that is very welcome indeed. But the media needs to remember the power of this young woman not because she is Nirbhaya or Amanat but because these names give her special powers. What happened to her has resonated so sharply because she was just an ordinary woman who had boarded a bus to go home after watching a film. We can all relate to that. We should leave it that way. She does not have a name, not because she lacks one, but because its absence reminds us again and again about the horror of what happened to her. Sometimes there is power in namelessness beyond the issue of privacy. It allows her to be anybody. And it allows everybody to put themselves in her shoes.

“Whether it is a right or an intrusion of privacy is a question that can be debated. I myself have never believed that a name should be attached to an idea, something that Alan Moore so brilliantly espouses in V for Vendetta. When V was shot, this is what he said, "There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof," stated writer Salil Tripathi in The Mint.

When and how a woman chooses to reveal her identity is a product of complex factors. Revealing her own identity can be an empowering process and one that contributes to furthering justice and ending the impunity of perpetrators. It takes immense courage to stand up and fight, but the decision has to be taken by the victim and not the media.