The gang rape of a 23-year-old student in a moving bus in Delhi has moved politicians to stir up a clamour for capital punishment for the rapists. This populist holler, however, does not leave the streets any safer, considering that a vast number of rapes go undetected, with the culprits still on the prowl.

Many of these unsolved cases are stuck at the stage where police submit something called Statement A to the magisterial court, which means the case has been established as true but not been detected.