I understand that an actual victim has to go through tremendous mental and emotional trauma in addition to the physical abuse and that might make it hard for the victim to go forward and report a case or file an FIR. You might even say that it becomes very hard to prove any of that in court after a few months time. The reason why sexual assault and rape is so hard to prove Radhika, is not because of male privilege. It is because there is not much difference between most cases of rape and the act of sex in itself. Finding semen samples would point out to an act of sex, and finding DNA under the nails might just be indicative of the fact that the person scraped the skin of their lover in a wild and passionate desire. Rape has to do with legal concepts of actus reus and mens rea. Actus reus, sometimes called the external element or the objective element of a crime, is the “guilty act” which, when proved beyond a reasonable doubt in combination with the mens rea, “guilty mind”, produces criminal liability in the common law based criminal law jurisdiction that is followed in most countries, including India. When actus reus is hard to determine and be taken as a sign for incontrovertible proof of guilt, we have to deal with the sticky business of mens rea. This is why we need to subject the claims of the said victim and the actions of alleged perpetrator to serious scrutiny. The reason why rape is so hard to prove is also the reason why rape allegation is so hard to disprove.