Take, for instance, the stark parallels between the two gangrape cases that jolted the conscience of the nation. In the Bhanwari Devi case, the sathin was denied her right to a medical examination for 52 hours; in the double gangrape case involving the 27-year-old daughter of a well-known Hindi journalist, the victim was made to wait for nine hours (from 2.30 pm to 11.30 pm, on September 5, 1997), including three hours at the hospital. Her clothes were not taken into safe custody by the police, so, in her ignorance, she washed her undergarments and unwittingly destroyed crucial forensic evidence. In the Bhanwari Devi case, the Gujjars made it a caste issue and roped in the the BJP MLA, Kanhaiya Lal Meena, who led a rally in Jaipur on January 18, 1996, denouncing the elderly sathin who defied village tradition totake a stand against child marriage as a randi (prostitute) and kalankini (bad omen). The victim of the double gangrape -- who was raped by nine men for three hours, according to the National Commission of Women, to celebrate the selection of one of the accused, Om Beniwal, as a State police officer, and then raped again on May 22 allegedly to force her to withdraw her charges against Deputy Superintendent of Police Prahlad Singh Krishaniya, son-in-law of Congress MLA Richpal Mirdha -- is being painted with the same venomous brush.On September 9, 1997, speaking in the Assembly, Congress MLA (and former Union minister) Jagdeep Dhankar proclaimed: ``... to establish this case as rape is similar to establishing an accidental death as murder.'' Thundered Mirdha, who lost the last Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket: ``Facts are being distorted against a particular group of people ...'' In a city where university hostels are still run on caste lines, the double gangrape has been turned into an instance ofpersecution of the Jats (most of the accused belong to that community) -- traditional Congress supporters now being courted assiduously by the Bharatiya Janata Party -- and the victim is being paraded as a ``woman of loose morals''.

For observers, this doesn't come as a surprise in a state which has a Commission for the Service of Cows, but not one for women. Or where, in Dholpur district, the scene of the sensational Kamala story broken by The Indian Express, women kidnapped from all over the country continue to be bought and sold.

``Our position is lower than that of cows in this society where women don't even have security in the mother's womb,'' says Alice Garg, Founder Secretary, Bal Rashmi Society, an NGO working for the rehabilitation of Sansis and other ``so-called criminal tribes''.

Not surprisingly, the State police only reflects entrenched social values when it simply dismisses rape and dowry cases on the ground that they are ``false''.

According to the pro-CPM Janvadi Mahila Samiti,quoting official statistics, the police in Sri Ganganagar sealed the fate of 228 (or 53 per cent) of the 430 dowry-related cases on this ground in 1996 alone.

Similarly, in the Bharatpur district in the same year, 50 per cent of the rape cases were summarily rejected.

Rajasthan recorded 992 cases of rape between January and September 1997, and 3,430 cases of dowry-related murders or atrocities.

Between 1990 and 1996, according to the Home Department, rape cases rose by 56 per cent (740 to 1,162) and molestation cases by 83 per cent (1413 to 2,583).

More ominous than these figures is what Kavita Srivastava of the Mahila Atyachar Virodhi Jan Andolan has to say. Just 10 per cent of the rape cases that finally make it to the courts, she says, end in conviction. And her judgment is upheld by the National Commission of Women. The accused ``in many cases,'' comments the inquiry committee set up by the National Commission of Women to investigate the September 5, 1997, gangrape, ``got away scot free eitherbecause the First Information Reports had not been recorded or the cases had not been properly investigated and pursued in the courts.'' Even if they are, the victims sometimes prefer to suffer in silence.

In the Ajmer sex scandal uncovered in 1992, says Srivastava, out of the 30 teenaged girls identified as victims of blackmail and sexual exploitation, only 12 had the courage to file First Information Reports.

Later, 10 of them turned hostile. Out of the 16 men identified by the girls as culprits, only 11 were arrested, of whom six are out on bail.

Perhaps, it is to be expected in a state where Rajendra Singh Rathore, a leading supporter of sati, is in the council of ministers.

Where the Deputy Chief Minister, Hari Shankar Bhabra, has gone on record in the Assembly with the patently derogatory Sanskrit shloka: ``Striya charitram purushasya bhagyam, daivo no janati kutaha manushyam (Why talk of humans, even the gods cannot say anything definite about a woman's character and a man's fate).''Where the son of the Transport Minister, Rohitaswa Sharma, stands accused on hurling acid at a teenaged girl.

And where a Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly (of Sapotra in Karoli district), Rangji Meena, is accused of rape.

It is against this unrelenting tide of history that the women of Rajasthan find themselves pitched against.