Brutal crime prompts India to OK death penalty for child rape
8-year-old’s death drew outcry, claim of ‘national emergency’
NEW DELHI — Offenders who rape girls under 12 may now be subject to the death penalty in India, according to an ordinance passed by India’s cabinet Saturday after a nationwide furor over the rape and murder of an 8-yearold girl.
In an emergency meeting, India’s cabinet approved an amendment to the law protecting children from sexual offenses that will set the minimum penalty for the gang rape of a child under 12 to life imprisonment or death, and the minimum for the rape of a child to 20 years up to a maximum sentence of life or death.
The new ordinance also calls for rape cases to be investigated in two months and trials to be concluded in the same span.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been under fire for his response to the crisis sparked by the arrest earlier this month of eight suspects in the January rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl.
With a Muslim victim and alleged Hindu assailants, the case rapidly became polarized, and two legislators from Modi’s political party were ultimately forced to step down after they attended a rally in support of the accused. Around the same time, a legislator from Modi’s party was arrested for raping a teen in a separate case in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
On Tuesday, Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi called rape and child sexual abuse in India a “national emergency,” with 100,000 such cases pending in courts.
“The whole country was enraged, and it cannot happen that the central government does not listen to us. Some change will occur,” Swati Maliwal, the chair of Delhi’s commission for women, told reporters Saturday. She said she will end a nine-day hunger strike she staged to protest government inaction over the controversial rapes.
Maliwal said she was happy about the government’s move but said police still need more accountability and resources.
But others criticized the ordinance, arguing that the possibility of a death sentence will not act as a deterrent and that India needs to improve its prosecution and conviction rate for rape and child sexual abuse cases. Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy says that the rate of rapes has not decreased since the death penalty for the crime was introduced in India in 2013.
“The death penalty is easy political candy to hand out to angry and upset citizens, but it’s much harder to work on justice systems that guarantee swift, certain punishment for sexual assault or to limit the violent patriarchies that cause rape in the first place,” Nundy said.