From India Today (here), this awful news of a girl whose fingers were were cut by her would-be molesters.
A teenaged Dalit girl was publicly molested and her fingers chopped off in Lucknow on Tuesday. The class XII student was attacked as she spurned the advances made by some local goons.
The boys first harassed the girl while she was returning from her coaching class. The alleged molesters gagged and assaulted the girl on her way. They then forced their way into the three-wheeler in which she was travelling and chopped off her fingers.
“The goons threatened that since I had filed a complaint with the police, they would chop off my fingers to ensure that I could never write again. One of the boys held my hands and another hit on my fingers with a knife. Some of my fingers are severely injured,” the victim said.
Her ordeal did not end there. The accused then threw her off the moving vehicle.
The victim had filed a complaint against the accused earlier for teasing and threatening her. As the police failed to act, the girl’s complaint enraged the goons. After the brutal assault, police finally got into action and arrested two accused.
The story reports that the girl’s fingers were “severely injured” or “chopped off” (the reporting is a little unclear). But in any case, the police had done nothing in response to the threats. Did they not take the girl seriously? Was there no protection they could have provided to her?
-Bridget Crawford
I can’t help but notice the passive verb, so common in news of the abuse and murder of women, used in the headline of the above article. I hope this was the original title, and not Ms. Crawford’s choice. Such wording too often minimizes the gravity of such crimes, as well as the responsibility of their perpetrators. “Girl’s Fingers Hacked” is far less powerful than saying, “Boys Accused of Hacking Off Girl’s Fingers”. We see this a lot in domestic killings, as in the murder of Gladys Ricart, killed by her ex-boyfriend on the day of her wedding to a different man. Most of the headlines ran “Woman Killed on Wedding Day”; one of the few that used the proper specifics was the NY Times article, headed: “Ex-Boyfriend Kills Bride-to-Be on Wedding Day in Front of Family”. The difference is enormous.
The India Today headline is “Molesters chop off girl’s fingers” (as least as it is showing now; I don’t remember if this was the original headline).
Both my headline and the first sentence of the India Today article deserve anyc’s criticism. Thank you, anyc, for this comment.