Police don't register knife-point rape case

After months of stalking a 17-year old woman, and bragging to his friends that one day he would kill her if she didn't sleep with him, a knife-wielding angry youth dragged her by the hair into a local park and assaulted her. The Deccan Chronicle reports that a crowd of his friends sat passively by in the park and watched the whole thing happen before she eventually escaped and attempted to notify the police.

When she arrived at the station the police refused to file a report and stated that "the young man must have been in love with the girl and reacted badly when she rejected him." The paper also states that the attacker was the son of a local DMK activist and the police were reluctant to file a case.

Since when do the police have the right to reject people's statements and avoid registering criminal cases against assaulters? Isn't there a basic system of protocol and evidence collection that all crimes deserve at least some level of investigation?

A similar event happened to me several months ago when I was unable to obtain a police report for a stolen passport (which I needed in order to apply for a new one), and I wondered how they would react if something more serious had happened.

It is one thing to casually say that police are corrupt in Chennai--a million bribes can attest to that--but something else entirely that they would so flagrantly ignore their duty to protect the community against obvious aggression. This assault happened in full view of the public and involved a dangerous weapon and yet the police sit idly by.

It is also interesting that Chief Minister Karunanidhi who was so ardent about defending Tamil women's honor when he erected a statue to Kanagi on Marina beach allows these same Tamil women to be raped in broad daylight and for his police force to sit and do nothing.