Girl's Suicide Puts Focus on Rape in Northern India

Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times

     Earlier this month a sixteen year old girl in India got raped while she was walking in the streets alone. Soon after she got raped, she committed suicide, probably because of fear and shame. In India if a girl her age gets raped instead the girl's family helping her, they beat them up.
     This incident caused the government of India to focus more on this problem. The rate of girls getting raped in India has increased by 870% since 1971. Every year there are about 20,000 total rapes that happen in India. Now the government has found out a way to try to decrease this enormous number. India already has a tradition of marrying their children at a young age. Now, the government is giving incentives for families who marry their children at a young age. This will motivate people to marry their children early, because most of the citizens of India desperately need the money that the government is offering. By doing this, the government thinks that rape cases will decrease. 40% of the world's child marriages are in India and by enforcing this new law that number will increase which makes the case worse. Child marriages are hard to maintain and will not decrease the number of rape in a highly populated country like India.