Ordinance moots death penalty if rape victim dies or slips into coma

February 2, 2013

Delhi-Protest

New Delhi, Feb 2: Shaken by the Nirbhaya case, the government on Friday approved a law prescribing death penalty for cases of rape which lead to the victim's death or her slipping into persistent vegetative state, going beyond the recommendations of the Justice JS Verma committee.

An ordinance cleared by the Union Cabinet seeks to treat rapes resulting in death of the victim or causing her to be in a persistent vegetative state as a crime belonging to the "rarest-of-rare" category for which courts can award death punishment if they so decide. For such cases, the ordinance proposes a minimum sentence of 20 years which can be extended to imprisonment until the natural life of the convict, or death.

[Click here to know what the govt accepted, partially accepted or didn't accept of Justice Verma panel report (PDF file)]

The ordinance was rushed through to beat the notification of Parliament's budget session which is due to begin on February 21. The notification would have prevented the issuance of an ordinance.

The ordinance, designed to change the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2012, and set to be promulgated shortly, has accepted Justice Verma committee's recommendation to treat voyeurism, stalking, disrobing of women and acid attacks as specific offences under the Indian Penal Code. The change will raise "eve-teasing" from being considered a minor offence to a serious crime attracting enhanced punishment.

The panel's recommendation for punishing those who knowingly employ a trafficked person has been accepted, with the government proposing a maximum sentence of five years for the guilty.

It has also accepted the recommendation of the committee, set up in response to the public upsurge over Nirbhaya rape case, to raise the maximum punishment for rape from the existing 10 years to life. For repeat offenders, the life imprisonment will cover his entire life and not just 14 years as is usually the case now.

Government has also embraced the recommendation that rape committed by a "person in authority" — a term that covers public servants and officers of police and Army — be punished by a minimum 10 years of rigorous imprisonment that can be extended to life.

However, it did not agree with the committee led by the retired Chief Justice of India that rape should not be made a gender-neutral crime. Accordingly, the expression "rape" in law is proposed to be replaced by "sexual assault".

10 years in jail for rape by 'person in authority'

Government has also turned down the committee's recommendations for criminalizing marital rape even in cases where the wife is above 16 years of age, and for punishing command officers who may fail to prevent rapes by subordinates.

The issue of whether the age of a juvenile should be reduced will be treated separately when the Juvenile Justice Act is reviewed.

Law minister Ashwini Kumar described the provisions of the ordinance as "path breaking". He said, "The changes proposed will bring in an effective and purposive law to protect the dignity of women."

He also said the ordinance, drafted with a sense of unprecedented urgency, reflected the UPA government's responsiveness to people's heightened sensitivities, as revealed in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya case, towards crime against women. "We have redeemed the pledge that we made," he said.

But women's rights activists were not pleased, and complained of a letdown. They are upset over the government's refusal to recognize marital rape as an offence, failure to hold command officers accountable for rapes by their subordinates and omission of rapes by armed forces as a category.

Sources in the government defended the provisions as bold, and pointed to a number of Justice Verma committee recommendations being accepted completely.

The law minister said the ordinance seeks to change provisions of Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill which is being examined by a parliamentary standing committee in the light of the recommendations of the Justice Verma committee.

The Justice Verma committee's recommendations have been widely welcomed as a new bill of rights for women.

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Agencies
February 11,2020

Bhadohi, Feb 11: With just two days left for the State Budget Session, a widow from Uttar Pradesh''s Bhadohi district has accused BJP MLA Ravindranath Tripathi and six others of sexual harassment over the years, the police said.

The incident is likely to cause considerable embarrassment to the ruling Yogi Adityanath government.

Bhadohi Superintendent of Police (SP) Ram Badan Singh said: "The woman, whose husband died in 2007, met the BJP MLA Ravindranath Tripathi''s nephew in 2014. She said that she was physically exploited by him for many years on the pretext of marriage."

The complainant also said that the nephew then got her lodged in a Bhadohi hotel for about a month during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, "where she was raped by the MLA and his other family members".

The case has been handed over to the Additional Superintendent of Police for further investigations.

A case is yet to be registered.

The Uttar Pradesh Budget Session starts from Thursday.

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News Network
March 20,2020

New Delhi, Mar 20: The coronavirus pandemic will leave behind a global recession with small businesses, self-employed and daily wagers taking the worst hit, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said on thursday.

"The virus will eventually be conquered, but it will have left behind a global recession. The costs of that are incalculably high at this time. The most fearsome toll will be on small businesses, the self-employed & those whose lives depend on meagre daily wages," Mahindra said in a tweet.

Apart from the toll on lives, the legacy of Covid-19 may well be deaths due to stress, loss of livelihoods, a rise in homelessness and in extreme situations, civil unrest, he added.

"The only global experience that has lessons for us in the current situation is the last world war. In the aftermath of WW2, the US came up with the Marshall plan to revive Europe, effectively a giant fiscal pump-priming," Mahindra said.

In the US, the government dramatically dismantled regulations and opened up the economy to trade and these actions led to a boom-cycle that stretched to 1975, he added.

"This time, there will be no victors, only the vanquished. So every country will have to create its own post ‘virus war” marshall plan & take care of those in society who are hit the hardest. Perhaps we too can build the foundations of a sustained global growth cycle," Mahindra said.

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News Network
January 27,2020

Jaipur, Jan 27: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that if the Citizenship Amendment Act leads to the implementation of the NPR and the NRC, it would be a complete victory for Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

He said that Jinnah's idea of a country was already winning in India with the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) coming into effect, but asserted that there was still a choice available.

"I would not say Jinnah has completely won, but I would say Jinnah is winning. There is still a choice available to the nation between Jinnah's idea of a country and Gandhiji's idea of a country," he said on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday.

The CAA came into force in India in December amid protests across the country and around the world.

The MP from Thiruvananthapuram said that the amended Citizenship Act took Jinnah's logic by declaring that religion shall be the basis of nationhood, reaffirming that Gandhi's idea is that all religions are equal .

"The CAA is, if you are talking Tennis, you would say one set up or big first set lead for Jinnah. But the next step would be if the CAA would lead to the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). If that happens, then you would consider that Jinnah's victory is complete," he said.

The CAA seeks to grant citizenship to migrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain and Parsi communities who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.

On the BJP's defence that the NPR was carried out during the UPA regime, Tharoor said that the Congress government had utilised a decision of the NDA government led by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

"It never asked where were your parents born. It never authorised the enumerators to note on the margin 'dubious citizenship', a term used in the NPR rules crafted by this government. That is purely BJP's invention," he said.

If we go around this country authorising people to interview all the citizens, or identify some who have 'dubious citizenship', you can be pretty sure which Indians are going to be found on the 'dubious citizenship', he said.

"That will principally be one community that is not mentioned in the CAA. And if that happens, then it is indeed Jinnah's victory.

"From wherever he is, he can point to this place and say, 'see I was right in the 1940. We are separate nations and Muslims deserved their own country because Hindus cannot be just'," Tharoor said.

Speaking about the Delhi election, the three-time MP said that the maximum development in the national capital happened under the Congress government.

"What Sheila Dikshit did in her 15 years as Chief Minister of Delhi, no other leader could do it before or after her," he said.

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