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Anindito Mukherjee / EPA
Indian activists holding banners denouncing rape participate in a protest in New Delhi, Tuesday. Five men suspected of beating and raping a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the Indian capital, who later died in a hospital in Singapore, face the death penalty if convicted. A sixth suspect will be tried as a juvenile.
India's Cabinet accepted most of the recommendations of a commission for toughening laws for crimes against women, including increasing the penalty for rape.
The panel was set up in response to the fatal gang rape in December of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. The Cabinet recommended Friday that the president issue an ordinance to turn the proposals into law, Law Minister Ashwini Kumar said.
The commission recommended an increase in the penalty for rape to 20 years and suggested life terms for gang rape.
Kumar did not give details. However, the Press Trust of India news agency said the Cabinet went beyond the panel's recommendations by providing for death sentences in cases where a rape leads to death of the victim or leaves her in a "persistent vegetative state."
The Cabinet also recommended including crimes like stalking, cyber stalking and voyeurism and imposing stiff punishments for such crimes.
"We believe that this is a progressive piece of legislation and is consistent with felt sensitivities of the nation in the aftermath of an outrageous gang-rape in New Delhi," Kumar said.
Police say the young woman and a male friend were attacked after boarding the bus on Dec. 16. The attackers beat the man and raped the woman, inflicting massive internal injuries with a metal bar, police said. The victims were dumped on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
The brutal attack set off nationwide protests, sparking a debate about the treatment of women and highlighting the inability of law enforcement agencies to protect them.
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Making the law tougher is good, but will it be enforced more widely? For too long, the rich and powerful have been able to escape the law and get away with their crimes. A well-placed bribe does wonders for such people. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything in this article which says that this will stop.
Welcome to the 21st century, India. Now, deliver on your promises.
The rapes will not stop until a few of them are given the death penalty and it is actually carried out.
Oh how magnanimous of India's Cabinet. Guess none of their daughters ever suffered that ordeal. Another third world country that refuses to grow up. Tradition you say. Keep it.
In USA there are more than million rapes a year. I beleive if convicted men must be castrated (physical and total) and women must be drprived of ovaries.
Simple. I do not want to spend money for prisons for these people.
77Observer makes a better point than he imagines. Third-world countries that won't grow up and face the music are nothing compared to the supposedly enlightened USA. We know and have evolved democratic principles...and good anti felony laws, are high tech and civilized, but we also have some the the highest violent crime rates in the whole world and put on shameless exhibitions in our courts once the cases get there. We had a whole war slaughtering thousands over slavery, whupped it, but until the 60's had unrestricted beatings and jarringly graphic mean segragation methods (eg drinking fountain images, eating places and restrooms, ramshakled little schools with 3 & 4 kids sharing a desk and old books). We have universal, mandatory, free education, and just about the worst place on the world's achievement scale academically, especially science.
IDGC: Reread your post. Your English completely oblitterates your meaning. Or, if you are recommending castrating men AND women, consider that predation in women doesn't involve action of the ovaries. In addition to pathological men, some raping men are merely extreme users with no respect for women. Any woman exhibiting the reciprocal of rape, is mentally ill...for sure. Have they just recently let you out of your straight jacket, mouth guard, four point restraints and given you computer access? Slow down.