Schools for scandal

What is it about rape and cover-ups? Why is there this compulsive need in some quarters to hush up charges of sexual assault? Despite a slew of tough laws against rape, why do we repeatedly encounter an institutional reluctance to call it out?

This week it came to light that a 16-year-old girl in a boarding school in Dehradun had allegedly been gang raped by four boys from the same school. As if it were not horrifying enough that schools are no longer safe spaces for children, the principal and other officials compounded the horror by trying to cover up the