Former Bollywood actor and founder of NGO No More Tears, Somy Ali, believes that celebrities and the public coming together for a united cause definitely helps in creating awareness. Speaking on the Kolkata rape and murder case of a trainee doctor, which saw a nationwide protest from people of all walks of life, she said, “While I appreciate Kareena (Kapoor Khan), Hrithik (Roshan), and many others who are using their platforms for this heinous crime, we have barely tipped the iceberg.”
“Does it help raise awareness? Absolutely! It’s better than not doing anything about it. But try to comprehend the bigger picture here. A doctor was gang-raped in a hospital. The words and the thought itself make me sick to my stomach, and then she was murdered,” she added.
Somy then asks the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee, what she is doing about it. She said, “She is a joke, not to mention an accessory to the crime. Staying silent and doing nothing while one has awareness is the worst crime in my book. How many more protests will it take to put an end to this? How many more placards do we need stating ‘We want justice’ till we actually attain justice?”
She also stressed that she has been saying this for years: that there should be some grave punishment for people who commit such heinous crimes. “It’s the same drum I have been beating again and again before it becomes hollow, and nothing will change without real change. With corruption and a significant lack of consequences, nothing will change. Call it chai pani or bribery, it must end. And at this point in time I haven’t seen anything that brings me hope,” she said.
“Corruption, moral compass, bribery, lack of law and order, and law enforcement taking money wrapped in the same newspaper that tells the story of the doctor being raped will change nothing. It’s disgraceful. Are there really no good people left in the world or within the Mumbai Police and its political system? What is going on? This is a very old and deep-rooted corruption issue that can’t be resolved via posts and posters,” she added. Somy continued that she is not disrespecting the protesters or the people posting on their social media; rather, she is commending their efforts. However, she added, “I am trying to say more has to be done. The question is for politicians and law enforcement agencies to understand what that’more’ is and whether the money folded in the rape story newspapers carries more weight than the burden of proof to arrest the perpetrators.”
Somy’s No More Tears recently achieved the big milestone of rescuing 50,000 people of all genders from abuse and human trafficking. Sharing her experience of meeting those victims, she said, “1 in 5 women are raped at some point in their lives. I deal with children, both boys and girls, plus young adult women who are rape victims, and at least 12–15 cases in one month. To say the scars never go away is an understatement. And I am talking about emotional scars. Surprisingly, I have found the children under the age of ten to heal faster and display more resilience than the young adults.” “As a rape survivor myself at age 14, I can relate, and my sharing that with them not only helps build a connection of trust, but it is a necessity so they know I am completely in the same place with them psychologically. Rape victims don’t heal as quickly as domestic violence victims. That’s what I have seen in 17 years of running NMT. Those scars last forever, but my priority is to get them to a level where they are at least learning to live with the trauma, similar to how I have managed to do so. Dwelling on it forever will not help, but that’s a very harsh sentence for me to say to a new rape victim. It takes months and at times a year of therapy before I can get them remotely close to where they were prior to the rape,” she added.
