It was no surprise, then, that the media that saw little news value in the brutal rape and death of a 17-year-old girl in Ludhiana on December 9, 2014, went to town on December 16 marking two years since a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was gang-raped in a moving bus in Delhi in 2012. In a moment of honesty maybe, a reporter with a primetime English news channel remarked that we (the media or perhaps the nation?) are “celebrating” December 16 before correcting her choice of words. Incidentally, the reporter in question was interviewing the parents of the girl whose death had stirred a global movement on violence against women.



What would have been a news day dedicated to women’s safety (in Delhi or, at best, the metropolis) and debates on sexual violence, however, took a swift turn as news about a terror attack in neighbouring Pakistan began to trickle in. The December 16 rape anniversary, to put it crassly, gave way to developing news of what was turning out to be one of the worst terror attacks in South Asia in recent times.