Ever since the country heard of the horrendous Sunday night incident in which a 23-year-old paramedical student was gangraped in a moving bus in south Delhi, people have been expressing their angst in different ways. Political leaders, women’s rights activists, lawyers and the common man have reacted sharply to the incident, and the entire capital is once again discussing the pressing issue of women safety.

But is this for the first time that a rape has taken place in Delhi? Do we wait for such incidents to initiate a discussion and pitch for a stronger law that would act as a deterrent? Or is it the measure of gruesomeness (in the present case) with which the act was done provokes us to debate and demand justice?

Rape incidents are not new for those of us living in the capital. Some of the incidents that shook the capital were the rape of a 17-year-old at Buddha Jayanti Park by president’s guards (2003); of a 22-year-old nurse by a ward boy at Shanti Mukund Hospital (2003); a Swiss diplomat’s rape (2003); and gangrape of a 30-year-old BPO staffer in an auto-rickshaw at Dhaula Kuan (2010). All these triggered immense rage among people in equal measure, only to die down subsequently.

What we should realise is, there could be many more rapes in future in the absence of a deterrent.

India is too big a county, and Delhi too vast a city, for the men and women in khaki to be present everywhere. That is understandable. But what isn’t understandable is the total absence of the fear that policing must bring about. As a result, Delhi’s underbelly is bolder than ever.

In case of rape, clamour for more stringent laws is seasonal now. The intelligentsia, activists and the media wait for the next case. In the existing system, a rapist perhaps knows that either he will never be caught or will be set free after a short while. Under law, a rape convict spends seven years or a maximum of 10 years in jail. Sentencing, too, takes a fairly long time, with the conviction rate abysmally low. And we are talking here of only the cases that are reported — for each such case there are many more that remain unreported due to pressure or the fear of social stigma.

Setting up fast-track courts for the crime is a good option to provide speedy justice in rape cases but, again, the shortage of judges and the huge number of pending cases don't make it a very viable, everyday option. Besides, the fact that a rapist would be free after a time might not be the strong deterrent required.

A debate is now going on whether rapists should be awarded capital punishment but that does not seem either politically or practically viable.

Another option, chemical castration of rapists, sounds somewhat convincing. Countries like the US, UK, Germany and Israel have experimented with surgical and chemical castration of convicted rapists. The idea is that the offender must undergo a similar trauma that a victim does for the rest of her life.

Chemical castration involves administration of a drug (anti-androgen) to reduce a person’s libido. For now, this seems a good way of punishing rapists without taking away their lives. Moreover, its cost — barely Rs 2,000 — is also much lesser than what it would take to feed and keep a rapist for 7-10 years in prison.

And the chances of a convict committing rape again are reduced to as low as 3 percent against the 97-percent chance of a rapist doing it again after completing his jail term.

Wish we could spend moolah on development of a somewhat diluted version of this chill pill to tame the testosterone levels of molesters. And for a repeat offender, the full dose!