The alleged kidnapping, rape and killing of an 11-year-old girl in eastern India has renewed national attention on the country’s continuing struggle to curb sexual violence, with activists, lawyers and officials pointing to deep-rooted social and institutional failures despite legal reforms introduced more than a decade ago.
According to a local investigating police officer, the girl left her home on the evening of a friend’s birthday party in a small town in West Bengal earlier this month but did not return. Police alleged that she was kidnapped, raped, placed inside a sack and thrown into a pond while she was still alive. Her body was recovered from the pond on the morning of July 5, a day after she was reported missing. Residents and police told Reuters that the body bore bite marks and bruises.
Reuters withheld the identities of the victim and her family in accordance with Indian law, which prohibits disclosure of information that could identify survivors or victims of sexual offences.
The victim’s father told Reuters he had been unable to think clearly since the incident. A close family friend alleged that police did little beyond making limited inquiries after the family reported the child missing, prompting local residents to collect CCTV footage themselves in an effort to trace her. Arvind Kumar Anand, a police officer in Baruipur, said the department was reviewing internal reports to determine whether any mistakes had been made during the response.
The case has drawn political attention only months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party assumed power in West Bengal for the first time, having pledged to improve women’s safety during the election campaign. However, activists told Reuters that changes in government alone cannot address structural problems, including entrenched patriarchy, gender bias within institutions and caste-related dimensions of sexual violence.
Official data cited by Reuters showed that India recorded 29,536 rape cases in 2024, a figure that has remained broadly unchanged in recent years. The National Crime Records Bureau also reported that more than 80 rapes are reported to police each day, while activists say many more cases remain unreported because of victim blaming and social stigma. Sexual offences against children have also increased over the past decade, with cases registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act reaching a record 69,191.
The Baruipur case is one of several recent incidents to attract nationwide attention. Police in Rajasthan told Reuters that a 12-year-old girl was abducted, drugged and allegedly raped by multiple men over four days before being rescued, with 22 people arrested in connection with the case. The Times of India also reported this week that a seven-year-old girl was raped, killed and her body discarded inside an under-construction shopping mall in Ghaziabad.
Lawyer Karuna Nundy, who helped draft India’s anti-rape legislation after the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, told Reuters that governments had failed to address the misogyny and patriarchy underlying sexual violence. She said sustained efforts were needed to change behaviour at the community level while improving recruitment of police personnel and appointing judges with a gender-progressive understanding of such cases.
The 2012 Delhi case led to tougher criminal penalties and the creation of fast-track courts for sexual offences. However, Reuters reported that while the government had planned to establish 2,600 fast-track special courts by 2026, only 755 had been set up, including 410 courts dedicated exclusively to cases under the POCSO Act.
The investigation into the Baruipur case has also reignited debate over extrajudicial police actions. Police said one suspect was killed after allegedly snatching a weapon from officers during an operation. Agnimitra Paul, a minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal, said four suspects had been arrested and described the killing as a clear message against such crimes. Opposition leaders and human rights activists, however, told Reuters that so-called police “encounters” bypass due process and weaken the justice system, arguing that swift shootings of suspects do not address the underlying causes of sexual violence or strengthen accountability.
