The Finger Wrap: Police, Portfolios, a Poet, and more

Modi’s Cabinet of 24 ministers has seven women. And for the first time since 1984, when Indira Gandhi took charge of the Ministry of External Affairs as prime minister, a woman holds the MEA portfolio.  But the question remains – what does this mean for women’s rights?

Of all the gruesome rape stories that emerged this week, the killing of two Dalit girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, in which police constables are said to be involved, has drawn the most headlines. With several factors at play here (caste, gender, politics, among others), the rapes highlight the shocking police apathy that allowed the crime to take place. 

The Badaun girls, cousins aged 14 and 15, went missing after they left their home at night to walk to an open field, as their home had no toilet. A top police officer in UP has said the majority of cases of sexual assault in the state took place when women left their homes to answer nature’s call.

The NHRC has issued show-cause notice to the Delhi government, asking it to explain why it should not be directed to pay compensation to the 12 African women who were victims of “racial prejudice” in the “gross violation of human rights” during Somnath Bharti’s raid on Khirki extension.

Noticed the #YesAllWomen hashtags around on twitter since the Santa Barbara killings? A look at what the tweets illuminate, and how men often don’t see the everyday misogyny women face.

Pallavi Aiyar on China’s ‘Leftover Women’, and what such discrimination means for women in China, India and beyond.

And here’s why women CEOs get fired more often.

In Bangalore, things got wacky. A man was nabbed for taking photographs of a woman at a coffee shop without her consent. When it emerged he was top police officer ADGP P. Ravindranath, he was released. With things spiraling into a tussle between top police officials, state reserve police burning tyres and disrupting traffic in ‘solidarity’ with Ravindranath, and the man himself asking to be arrested, this is one story even Kafka couldn’t have thunk up.

Poet and writer Maya Angelou passed away, with an outpour of stories, posts and tweets remembering her life and work. But no, it wasn’t her on that bus.