A young girl, a baby almost, killed in the most atrocious circumstances. Two young men, both teenagers, one of them just out of childhood, violate this baby?s purity in the most violent way one can imagine. Why ? What makes a man or a boy or a person not to give a damn about another human being, about a life, about a body ? What went through those boys? mind ? What goes through the mind of people who do such things?

Above all what is to become of them? When you have a bad start in life, what happens to you ? You?re sent to jail ? horror of horrors. Where thieves do not like rapists (don?t we all) and where there is a chance that they get raped by other prisoners the minute they walk through the doors of Beau-Bassin prison. Because prisoners have their own sense of morality, whatever the most righteous of us may think. The deranged guy will spend the next whatever number of years, being treated like a pariah in prison and will probably come out of jail hating the rest of the world. He may also be infected with aids. And then we had better be on our guard.

Chances are that a minor who gets convicted of rape will be sent to the Rehabilitation Youth Centre until he reaches majority. He could then be set free as he reaches adulthood. Because the crime was committed while he was still a minor. And both of them ? the adult and the minor would have paid their debt to society. And all will be well as we get on with our lives. But who the hell are we kidding if it?s not ourselves ?

Neither of those two boys would have learnt, understood and comprehended the extent of their vileness if no attempt is made to explain and describe it to them. If they are not told where to draw the line between good and bad, between what?s moral and what?s not, between decency and indecency, between values and depravity. And should we be surprised when ? not if- there is recurrence ? Will it not be our fault ? Till when are we going to turn a blind eye to the ills of our society ? And our role and responsibility in it ? Where will the abdication of our duties lead us ?

For how long will prisons be the place where we send the bad and ugly to rot? Like an eyesore that we need to cover up ? So we can pretend that everything else is fine ? But everything is not fine. And as long as we do not understand the importance of rehabilitation and of psychological treatment for the mentally deranged, we will be like the proverbial ostrich.

But the ostrich cannot spend the rest of its lifetime with its head stuck in the sand. It would suffocate. And then it would die. But before dying, it would go through the worst kind of torture. This is exactly what will happen to our society if we?re not careful. And it is not enough to warn the mentally sick and deranged that laws will be tougher; they do not understand this kind of language. So then, how about speaking a language they understand ?