Stricter punishments
Gender-based sensitivity must begin at home and at the primary level in schools.
People fear that public sentiment was the driving force behind this law and that may set a precedent again. PHOTO: AFP
The power of protests has borne some result in India whose cabinet last week approved stricter punishments for rapists, including the death penalty should a rape victim die, following the death of a gang-rape victim in New Delhi. If approved by President Pranab Mukherjee (and then parliament within six months), the law will see the doubling of the present sentence of gang rape to 20 years or a rapist can even be made to serve life without parole; if the rape victim dies or falls into a vegetative state, the rapist can receive the death penalty. Other crimes have also been added to this new legislation like voyeurism, acid attacks, trafficking of women and stalking, according to The New York Times.
However, not everyone is happy with how this law has been rushed into existence and how it advocates capital punishment at a time when most countries around the world are moving away from the death penalty. People fear that public sentiment was the driving force behind this law and that may set a precedent again. Indian penal law rarely exercises the death penalty; it executed its first prisoner in eight years last year, the surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attack. Critics of this law argue that the government refused to recognise marital rape as a crime and that armed forces were omitted from being held accountable in this law. India’s law minister was quoted by reporters as saying that his government was motivated to take these steps so as to make women feel safer in the country. He should know that laws alone cannot and do not act as deterrents. This is especially if army officers, in Indian Kashmir for example, who have been accused by a leading independent Indian human rights organisation of committing human rights abuses including rape, are exempt from being tried under this law. Gender-based sensitivity must begin at home and at the primary level in schools. It must be evident in the media, among the police and the magistrates. Only then can women begin to feel a modicum of safety in society.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 11th, 2013.
However, not everyone is happy with how this law has been rushed into existence and how it advocates capital punishment at a time when most countries around the world are moving away from the death penalty. People fear that public sentiment was the driving force behind this law and that may set a precedent again. Indian penal law rarely exercises the death penalty; it executed its first prisoner in eight years last year, the surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attack. Critics of this law argue that the government refused to recognise marital rape as a crime and that armed forces were omitted from being held accountable in this law. India’s law minister was quoted by reporters as saying that his government was motivated to take these steps so as to make women feel safer in the country. He should know that laws alone cannot and do not act as deterrents. This is especially if army officers, in Indian Kashmir for example, who have been accused by a leading independent Indian human rights organisation of committing human rights abuses including rape, are exempt from being tried under this law. Gender-based sensitivity must begin at home and at the primary level in schools. It must be evident in the media, among the police and the magistrates. Only then can women begin to feel a modicum of safety in society.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 11th, 2013.