A Dalit woman in Perumbavoor, Kerala is raped and murdered. How many of you are aware of it? With Assembly Elections round the corner in the southern state of India, political parties are busy trying to make political capital out of this inhuman act.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh says, “The rape and murder indicate that the Kerala government (run by the Congress party) was trying to cover up the incident as it took days to register the case." And he adds that the Central Government is ready for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe. Better late than never, is all you can say. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, slated to be a future resident of 7, Race Course Road, New Delhi is initially silent but then anticipating the repercussions, promises ‘swift action’ to punish the guilty. Well, he had to be calculative. After all it’s is his party that is in power in Kerala.  Our very own Pradhan Mantri Narendra Modi is more focused on making an emotional appeal to the people of Tamil Nadu to give the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance to serve them. But quite astutely, he chooses his first election rally in Kerala to refer to the brutal rape of the girl. The motive is simple: Queer the pitch for the Congress-led UDF government. Politicians mean politics.

But does anyone seriously sympathise with the mother of the law student in Kerala whose daughter was brutally killed in her own backyard? No. There is too much on the platter. We are busy keeping ourselves updated on the Hrithik Roshan vs Kangana Ranaut war. We are glued to the TV to find out who nails who in the AugustaWestland chopper scam. And the whistle-blower on corruption Subramanian Swamy is hell bent on ‘ensuring’ that the truth on the chopper scam is unveiled. He is a man on a mission busy targeting his friend-turned-foe Sonia Gandhi.

Look around and up the web. How many stories or opinion pieces do you come across on the rape of the Dalit woman in Kerala? It has not even created as much of an impact as the Nirbhaya rape case (2012) in Delhi did. Why should it? There are so many important stories to keep a tab on.  Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma have reportedly patched up.  Salman Khan is the goodwill ambassador for the Indian contingent in the Rio Olympics. And Sunny Leone is making news with her film One Night Stand.

Who cares? But isn’t it something we have got used to? The media calculates and then jumps on to a story. The moment, something more saleable (a quote by Modi or Mamata Banerjee) comes up, the humiliation of a woman is relegated to the background.

And to give you a piece of information another woman in Kerala was raped to follow the  the murder of the Dalit woman. However, as the West Bengal chief minister, Mamatadi said on the infamous Park Street rape case,   “It’s a sajano ghotona (stage-managed incident),” don't be taken aback if someone toes her line.

There is a plethora of cases of violence against women. Even kids are not spared. But how much of them we come to know of? The parents of the girl in Kamduni in West Bengal are crying. Nirbhaya’s parents have lost their daughter. But we bloggers, the media and our trusted political leaders have a vested interest in their sufferings. Let’s get an exclusive story out of an assault. Let’s look for a different angle to cover an incident of a rape. And let’s try to ensure that we  score brownie points over our opposition parties at a time when we are going to the polls. Such is our mindset and we still expect the triple Talaq system to be abolished.

Such is the state of affairs that dignified women bear the brunt for being vocal enough against the injustice meted out to them at their work place. And we still talk of reservation of women in the Parliament.
In a country where a woman is asked to unbutton her jeans in front of an elected Member of Parliament called Sakshi Maharaj (apparently he wanted to know where exactly she was injured), you can only say, “It happens only in India.”