Somehow the news of a woman getting raped in broad daylight while no one comes over to help her, instead are busy recording it does not really come as a surprise.
This is regarding the horrifying and frankly sickening act of crime that occurred yesterday on October 23rd, where in Vishakhapatnam a man raped a woman sometime around 2.30 pm in New Railway Colony as reported by several news sites.
The sickening part is not that it was broad daylight, but the fact that the man did this heinous crime on a relatively busy roadside with people walking by and not one single person helped the woman.
The woman who had apparently run away from her home after a family dispute some 2 days back as per news sources was resting under a tree on a pavement in the New Railway Colony when the accused, Ganji Shiva, a local truck driver assaulted her.
This entire thing was witnessed by a nearby auto driver who recorded it on his phone. He then later showed this video to the police that allowed them to identify the culprit and ultimately find him.
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Why Did No One Help The Woman?
According to certain news sites, the reason that people are giving for not helping the woman is because, the man Shiva threatened and scared them away from the scene.
However, frankly speaking, that just seems like an extremely feeble and nonsensical excuse that people are now giving to soothe their guilty conscience. The man was not holding any kind of weapon, nor was he surrounded with friends or a gang that 1 or 2 people could not intervene in fear of being attacked or beaten up.
As per reports, Shiva was an alcoholic and drug addict too and I believe it wouldn’t have been that difficult to overpower him, and ultimately stop him from raping the woman.
Instead, people either averted their eyes and simply kept on walking, according to the video, or were busy recording it as the auto driver did.
Even though the video by the auto driver helped in nabbing the culprit, it is sad that he could not take a few steps and stop the crime from being committed in the first place.
Why People Avoid Helping Others
There is actually a term for this kind of behavior called ‘bystander apathy’ wherein people would be more than willing to stand by and watch something wrong being committed but not take a step to stop it.
The bystander effect suggests that the probability of people helping out is less likely if they are in a group or in a crowd rather than when alone.
A lot of social psychological researchers have commented on this type of mindset and observed that the more people witnessing a crime the less would actually try to stop it.
One such study conducted way back in 1968 by John Darley and Bibb Latane in the United States, where they staged a crisis situation involving a woman, noticed that a higher number of people helped the woman when they were alone rather than when they were with a group of people.
One reason for not helping is the responsibility that one feels to stop something wrong from occurring. People might believe that they do not want to get involved in all the trouble that will come by stopping it and thus prefer to pretend as if they didn’t see anything.
It seems people these days are truly lacking a sense of responsibility and empathy if someone is in a difficult position. Which seems to shed a sad light on the state of society around us and speaks of how much of a coward people are ready to be.
Image Credits: Google Images
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