Pakistan, Sept. 26 -- Fourteen years after Nirbhaya was supposed to have changed India's conversation on sexual violence, Delhi is back on the streets asking the same questions. Three men allegedly posing as policemen gang-raped a 17-year-old girl in a public park this week, sending hundreds of students marching through the capital. The outrage has once again produced arrests, promises and an official scramble over women's safety. What it has not produced is any convincing explanation for why the country keeps returning to this point.

India recorded an average of 80 reported rapes every day in 2024, up from around 68 in 2012. More than 200,000 rape cases were before the courts that year, yet fewer than one in ten were concluded. The conv...