One of the men involved in the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a bus in Delhi – an attack that provoked anti-rape protests across India in 2012 – has said that girls are responsible for rape.
The comment would be baffling from anyone, but Mukesh Singh is a man who, along with five others, raped a woman then beat her with iron bars, disemboweling her. Jyoti Singh, a medical student, who had just completed her exams, worked from 8pm until 4am in a call centre and had been spending an evening off watching The Life of Pi at a cinema with a male friend. She boarded the bus at 8.30pm and died days later in hospital.
Singh said that the reason he and the other attackers didn’t only rape but beat Joyti was because ‘When being raped, she shouldn't fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they'd have dropped her off after “doing her”, and only hit the boy.’
The comments, made in an interview for a BBC documentary, continued: ‘You can't clap with one hand – it takes two hands.’
‘A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good.’
READ MORE: Indian Prime Minister Makes Totally Progressive Comments On Rape
We don’t really know where to begin with this man. The ignorance is jaw-dropping. He’s in prison now, but one of the lawyers who defended him, ML Sharma, told the same documentary: ‘We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman.' He also stood by previous comments saying he'd 'douse petrol and set alight' his daughter for going out at night.
India’s Daughter, which looks at how the horrific incident became India’s ‘Arab spring for gender equality’, is part of the Storyville series and will air on Sunday to coincide with International Women’s Day. It will also be shown to 20 million school pupils in India. The filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, spent two years making the documentary and told The Guardian: ‘I began this film with a narrow focus: “Why do men rape?” I discovered that the disease is a lack of respect for gender. It’s not just about a few rotten apples, it’s the barrel itself that is rotten.’
Depressing but important viewing, from the sounds of it.
India's Daughter is on BBC Four on Sunday 8th March
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.