‘Death for rape of girls under 12’
Opposition moves to impeach chief justice
NEW DELHI, April 21, (RTRS): India’s cabinet on Saturday approved the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an emergency meeting in response to nationwide outrage in the wake of a series of cases.
The executive order, or ordinance, amends the criminal law to also include more drastic punishment for convicted rapists of girls below the age of 16, government officials said. The order, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, will come into effect once it is signed by India’s president.
India launched fast-track courts and a tougher rape law that included the death penalty after a gruesome assault on a young woman shocked the country in 2012, but India’s rape epidemic has shown no sign of dying down.
There were 40,000 rapes reported in 2016. The victims were children in 40 percent of those cases. Every day, newspapers carry fresh stories of sexual violence against women.
The latest outpouring of national revulsion came after details emerged of the gang rape of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in a Hindudominated area of Jammu and Kashmir state. Local leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had appeared to offer support to the men accused, adding to the public disgust.
Protests around the country were also prompted by the arrest of a lawmaker from the BJP last week in connection with the rape of a teenager in Uttar Pradesh, a populous northern state that is governed by the party.
More recently, a sexual attack on an 11-year-old girl was reported in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The post-mortem revealed the girl had been tortured, raped, strangled and smothered.
Modi’s failure to speak out soon enough during the latest bout of public anger fuelled criticism that his government was not doing enough to protect women.
With a general election due next year, Modi moved swiftly to remedy that negative perception by holding the emergency cabinet meeting as soon as he returned on Saturday morning from an official visit to Europe.
The cabinet also prescribed measures for stronger punishment and faster trials in rape cases, a government document seen by Reuters showed.
In cases of the rape of a girl below the age of 16, the cabinet increased the minimum punishment to 20 years from 10 years. The penalty for the rape of women was raised to 10 years from seven years.
The document made no mention of the rape of boys or men.
India’s judicial system has been unable to keep up with the growing number of rape cases. The cabinet also recommended mandatory completion of rape investigations within two months and advised that trials should also be completed in two months.
“Government has taken serious note of incidents of rape in various parts of the country,” the document said. “While expressing deep anguish over such incidents, it has been decided to devise a comprehensive response to deal with the situation.”
The cabinet also approved the establishment of more fast-track courts to deal with rape cases, the appointment of more public prosecutors, and ordered police stations to be equipped with special forensic kits, among other steps.
A court overturned the conviction of a former Indian state minister from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party on Friday for involvement in riots in Gujarat state 16 years ago, citing lack of consistency in witness testimonies, a prosecutor said.
Up to 2,500 people, most of them Muslims, were hunted down and hacked, beaten or burnt to death during the riots in 2002, activists say, in retaliation for the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims in which 59 people were killed.
Modi was the chief minister at the time, but a special investigation absolved him of any wrongdoing in the worst riots in independent India’s history.
A trial court, however, held 32 people guilty of murder in 2012 and sentenced them to 28 years in prison, with the state minister Maya
Kodnani being the highest-profile figure to be convicted.
But on Friday, the Gujarat High Court ruled that it wasn’t entirely established that Kodnani was at Naroda Patiya, the site of one of the worst massacres in the three days of violence, prosecutor R.C. Kodekar said.
India’s opposition parties launched an unprecedented bid to impeach the top judge on Friday, accusing him of failing to protect the independence of the judiciary from executive interference, among other charges.
A petition, backed by lawmakers from seven parties, raised five charges against Chief Justice Dipak Misra, including an accusation he arbitrarily used his power to allot sensitive cases and questioning his conduct in the acquisition of land.
Misra came under a cloud in January when the four next highest-ranking judges in the Supreme Court criticised his distribution of cases and raised concerns about judicial appointments.
The judges said then that the issues involving the Supreme Court’s administration were serious enough to prompt them take the unprecedented step of going public with their criticism.
Misra was appointed in August and is due to retire in October, when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 65.
Misra’s office told reporters he would not be making any comment on the issue.