I am not knocking it, I'm just wondering about the selectivity in the coverage by my paper:
"India says 1 woman killed every hour over dowry" Associated Press, September 04, 2013
"India says 1 woman killed every hour over dowry" Associated Press, September 04, 2013
NEW DELHI — One woman dies every hour in India because of dowry-related crimes, indicating that the country’s economic boom has made demands for dowries even more persistent, women’s rights activists said Tuesday.
Is a woman being raped in India every hour?
Is a woman being raped in India every hour?
The National Crime Records Bureau said 8,233 women were killed across India last year because of disputes over dowry payments given by the bride’s family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. The conviction rate in dowry-related crimes remained a low 32 percent, according to bureau statistics.
Indian law prohibits the giving or receiving of a dowry, but the custom persists. Each year, thousands of Indian women are doused with gasoline and burned to death because the groom or his family felt the dowry was inadequate.
It's a far more common problem and receives one-day wonder coverage? Must be no big deal because they are not Muslim.
And if the portrayal in my jewspaper is correct, still savages:
"Rape, killing of 3 sisters inflame India" Associated Press, February 22, 2013
NEW DELHI — A week after the bodies of three young sisters were found in a village well, police said Thursday they have launched a hunt for the men suspected of raping and killing them, the latest case of sexual violence to grip the country.
The sisters, ages 5-11, were found in the Bhandara district in Maharashtra state on Feb. 14 after they had gone missing from school, police officer Javed Ahmed said. The area is more than 630 miles south of New Delhi, the capital.
As the victims’ mother accused police of a shoddy investigation, enraged villagers forced shops to close, burned tires, and blocked a national highway passing through the area for several hours on Wednesday, demanding justice.
‘‘The police did not take the case seriously and did nothing for two days,’’ the CNN-IBN television news channel quoted the mother as saying. Her name was withheld.
One police officer has been suspended for not acting promptly, Indian Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel, who represents Bhandara district in Parliament, told reporters.
‘‘All of us have to hang our heads in shame,’’ Patel said.
Cabinet Minister Manish Tewari called the killings a ‘‘very, very heinous assault’’ and said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was sending $18,300 to the family. The central government has asked state investigators to keep them informed of the investigation.
That's what, $6100 for each girl? Is that what an Indian girl's life is worth? No wonder they are being burned dead.
The fatal gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16 set off nationwide protests about India’s treatment of women and spurred the government to hurry through a package of laws to protect them....
Related: Indian Gang Bang
They passed laws but nothing has changed, as you will soon see.
--more--"
"American woman gang-raped in Indian town, police say" Associated Press, June 04, 2013
NEW DELHI (AP) — An American woman was gang-raped Tuesday in the northern Indian resort town of Manali, police said.
The 30-year-old woman was picked up early Tuesday morning by men in a truck as she was hitchhiking back to her guest house after visiting a friend, police officer Sher Singh said.
The three men in the truck then drove to a secluded spot and raped her, he said. She went to police and they filed a rape case.
No arrests had been made as of Tuesday afternoon, Singh said.
Authorities issued an alert for the three men and set up roadblocks to check any trucks leaving the town, he said.
The reported rape came after a Swiss tourist was gang-raped in March while on a cycling trip through rural India. Six men were arrested in that attack.
Apparently Indian authorities are impotent.
In a separate incident the same month, a British woman traveling in northern India jumped out of the third-floor window of her hotel room fearing a sexual attack after the hotel’s owner tried to force his way into the room.
The assaults come amid heightened concern about sexual assaults in India that followed the fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi in December.
That rape sparked public protests demanding better protection for women.
--more--"
Related: Another Atrocious Rape in India
I'm really becoming irritated now.
"Journalist gang-raped in Mumbai" by Muneeza Naqvi | Associated Press, August 24, 2013
NEW DELHI — A 22-year-old photojournalist was gang-raped while her male colleague was tied up and beaten in an isolated, overgrown corner of India’s business hub of Mumbai, police said Friday.
Nowhere in India is safe.
The case was reminiscent of the December gang rape and death of a university student in the Indian capital that shocked the country.
Others since have not gotten as much attention.
The latest attack took place Thursday evening in Lower Parel, a onetime textile manufacturing neighborhood of south Mumbai that over the past decade has changed dramatically. Today, upscale malls, trendy restaurants, and super-luxury condominiums sit side-by-side with abandoned textile mills and sprawling slums.
Police said the woman was on assignment for a magazine to take pictures of the neighborhood when five men confronted her and her colleague about 7 p.m. After initially offering to help her get permission to shoot inside a crumbling, isolated building, the men became aggressive and accused the male colleague of being involved in a local crime.
When he denied the accusation, they tied his hands with a belt and took the woman to another part of the compound and took turns raping her, Mumbai’s police commissioner, Satyapal Singh, told reporters....
The assault comes amid heightened concerns about sexual violence in India. The gang rape and death of the student on a bus in New Delhi in December had shaken a country long inured to violence against women and sparked protests demanding better protection for women.
--more--"
"3d suspect is arrested in Mumbai gang rape
MUMBAI — Mumbai police said Saturday that they arrested a third suspect in the gang rape of a photojournalist who was attacked this week while on assignment. The 22-year-old woman was assaulted by five men Thursday in Shakti Mills, an abandoned textile mill compound, where she was taking photographs for an English-language magazine. A male colleague who accompanied her was tied up and beaten. The attack has sparked protests and outrage in the Indian news media (New York Times)."
"Last of 5 suspects in Mumbai gang rape arrested" Associated Press, August 26, 2013
NEW DELHI — Police on Sunday arrested the last of five men wanted in the multiple rape of a photojournalist in Mumbai, and said charges would be filed soon in a case that has incensed the public and fueled debate over whether women can be safe in India.
The victim, a 22-year-old Indian woman, said she was eager to return to work after Thursday night’s assault, in which five men repeatedly raped her while her male colleague was beaten and tied up in an abandoned textile mill in the country’s financial capital.
A statement from Jaslok Hospital, where the woman has been since the attack, said her condition was being monitored but that she was ‘‘much better’’ and was being visited by family. Indian law forbids identifying rape victims by name.
Police arrested the fifth suspect Sunday in New Delhi, the capital, after rounding up the other four in Mumbai.
Mumbai’s police commissioner, Satyapal Singh, said comprehensive charges would be filed. He said police had the evidence to prosecute the suspects, including the victim’s testimony and medical samples taken after the assault.
Police said one of the two suspects who appeared in court Sunday had confessed to his involvement. The court ordered the two to be held until Aug. 30, along with two others who appeared in court Saturday. The suspect arrested in New Delhi was being taken to Mumbai for processing.
Police say one suspect will undergo tests to confirm his age after his family said he was 16. Police maintain he is 19, which makes him eligible for trial as an adult. The eldest of the suspects is 25.
It is rare for rape victims to visit police or a hospital immediately after an attack in India, where an entrenched culture of tolerance for sexual violence has led to many cases going unreported. Women are often pressed by social pressure or police to stay quiet about sexual assault, experts say, and those who do report cases are often subjected to public ridicule or social stigma.
Good thing AmeriKa doesn't have that problem.
--more--"
"Charges filed in Mumbai gang rape" Associated Press, September 20, 2013
MUMBAI, India — Police in India’s financial center of Mumbai have filed charges against four men and a juvenile in the gang rape of a photojournalist that fueled further debate about women’s safety after a fatal assault in New Delhi sparked mass protests.
The 600-page charge sheet filed in a magistrate’s court lists details of the attack last month in Mumbai, citing 86 witnesses and DNA evidence, the Press Trust of India reported Thursday.
The 22-year-old photojournalist was on assignment with a male colleague at an abandoned textile mill in Mumbai’s Lower Parel area — where luxury malls and condominiums stand alongside sprawling slums — on Aug. 22 when they were approached by several men who offered to gain permission to shoot photos in the building. Once inside, the pair was attacked. The male colleague was beaten and tied up while the attackers took turns raping the woman.
The Mumbai charges come a little more than a week after a New Delhi court sentenced four men to death for the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in the capital last December.
That attack sparked huge protests in the capital. The New Delhi victim died two weeks later from massive internal injuries from being penetrated by a metal rod.
The New Delhi case prompted discussions about tolerance of public groping, sexual assault, and violence against women in a country where rapid cultural and economic change is clashing with long-entrenched conservative values.
Pledging to crack down, the federal government has created fast-track courts for rape cases, doubled prison terms for rape, and criminalized voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks, and the trafficking of women.
--more--"
"Teen gets 3 years in India gang rape case; Protesters, kin of victim say juvenile sentence too light" by Pamposh Raina | New York Times, September 01, 2013
NEW DELHI — A court on Saturday sentenced a teenager to three years in a juvenile detention center for participating in a gang rape in December 2012 that led to the death of a 23-year-old woman. The punishment visibly disappointed the victim’s family.
The teenager had been working as an assistant on a private bus when the woman and a male friend boarded it, heading home from a movie theater. But the bus began to circle the ring road around Delhi and, according to police, the youth and five men repeatedly raped the woman, including with an iron rod, before throwing her onto the highway.
She was treated at hospitals in India and Singapore but died of her injuries as thousands of protesters marched against sexual violence here in the Indian capital.
Three years is the longest sentence the youth could have received under Indian law, because he was a few months shy of his 18th birthday when the crime occurred and could not be tried as an adult.
The woman’s parents looked crestfallen as they emerged from the courtroom, and a small group of protesters shouted, “We want justice” and “Hang the juvenile.”
Weeping, the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, said, “We have been wronged.”
Her husband, Badrinath Singh, said that the court might as well have set the man free.
Maybe they could burn him alive instead.
“We were hopeful that the board would give a sentence that would give us some peace,” Singh said, visibly struggling to maintain his composure.
The case prompted India’s government to toughen laws on sexual violence and set off a debate over whether to lower the age at which a person can be tried as an adult to 16 from 18.
The Supreme Court of India is hearing a petition for a review of the juvenile law, which is oriented toward reform rather than punishment, but last week it gave a nod to the Juvenile Justice Board to deliver a verdict regardless of the petition.
The board did not find the teenager guilty of all 16 charges against him, said Rajesh Tiwari, his defense lawyer. Tiwari was under court order not to disclose details of the counts his client had been convicted of, as the trials of four men accused in the case are pending. A fifth man, the driver of the bus, was found hanged in his jail cell in New Delhi in March.
Tiwari said the verdict Saturday was subject to review.
After the ruling was announced at the juvenile court, a small group of protesters wearing black bands on their foreheads began shouting slogans. Pihu Karmakar, 20, a recent graduate of the University of Delhi, said she thought the law should not distinguish between juveniles and adults in rape cases.
“She was a medical student,” Karmakar said of the victim. “She would have saved so many lives.”
Swami Ramavtar Baba, a white-bearded man in a saffron robe, said he was a farmer who had traveled here from a neighboring state.
“The punishment should be more,” he said. “The law should change.”
--more--"
"4 convicted in rape case that transfixed India; Sentencing is today, with some calling for death" by Ellen Barry | New York Times, September 11, 2013
NEW DELHI — Four men were convicted of all charges Tuesday in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman who was attacked when she boarded a bus in New Delhi last December, bringing a bitter close to a case that tore open the subject of sexual violence in this rapidly changing society.
The last and most urgent question — whether any of the men will receive the death penalty — will be answered Wednesday, when they are sentenced at a morning hearing. The family of the victim has demanded death sentences, and much of the public seemed to share their anger, flooding the streets last year to demand swift punishment in the case. Police here were braced for protests that might follow the sentencing.
The crime stood out for its horror, even in this sprawling and chaotic city.
The woman was returning home from a movie with a male friend and boarded a private bus with a group of men, mostly working-class migrants who the police said had been drinking. While the bus circled Delhi, the men attacked the pair, knocked the woman’s friend unconscious, and took the woman to the back of the bus and raped her, sometimes using a metal rod. The two were dumped on the roadside, naked and bleeding.
The woman died two weeks later of her injuries.
Her death seemed to open a vault here, and nine months later reports of rape still saturate the country’s newspapers — whether because of increased attacks or increased reporting is not clear.
Along with the dowry deaths, right?
Under pressure to respond to the surge of public anger, the government toughened laws on sexual violence. But the drumbeat of fresh reports offers little hope that this society has confronted the problem, and foreign women have become increasingly wary of traveling to India.
I suppose they should be given what has happened to tourists.
After the verdict, a group of protesters stood outside, five of them men wearing black hoods, with heavy nooses looped around their necks. Young women stood with them, holding the ropes aloft.
“Hang the rapists! Hang the rapists! Hang the juvenile! Hang the juvenile!” they chanted.
Vikas Tyagi, 31, who was with the group, said he thought executions were necessary to put an end to rapes.
“Only fear can stop it,” he said. “We are the youth of India. We are her voice.”
The prosecution benefited from detailed witness statements given by the victim before she died, and from her male companion, who came to court in a wheelchair to testify. But despite the establishment of special fast-track courts for sex crimes, it has moved slower than many hoped, unfolding under unprecedented scrutiny.
One defendant, Ram Singh, who was driving the bus at times during the assault, hanged himself with his bedsheet in his Delhi prison cell this year as his cellmates looked on. His family said he had been subjected to sustained abuse while in custody, and at one point had been forced to drink urine. They believe he was murdered by the police....
I thought that when I first read it.
--more--"
Related:
"The gang rape of the young woman in December has provided a test for an ambivalent country."
Now Indians are ambivalent?
"Death penalty set in India’s notorious gang rape case; Decision brings rejoicing, and some skepticism" by Ellen Barry and Betwa Sharma | New York Times, September 14, 2013
NEW DELHI — There was no mistaking the whoop of joy that rose outside Saket District Court on Friday, when word got out that four men convicted in last December’s horrific gang rape and murder had been sentenced to death by hanging. People burst into applause. They hugged whoever was beside them. They pumped the air with their fists.
“We are the winners now,” said a woman holding a placard. Sweat had dried into white rivulets on her face, but she had the look of a woman who had, finally, gotten what she wanted. And it was true: A wave of protests after the December rape have set remarkable changes in motion in India, a country where for decades vicious sexual harassment has been dismissed indulgently, called “eve-teasing.”
Are there any winners here?
But some of India’s most ardent women’s rights advocates hung back from Friday’s celebration, skeptical that four hangings would do anything to stem violence against women, a problem whose proportions are gradually coming into focus.
“I think a lot of people were hugging each other because they thought this evil is localized, and it will be wiped out, and that is not the case,” said Karuna Nundy, a litigator who has argued before India’s Supreme Court. “The sad truth is that it is not a deterrent.”
From the moment it broke, the story of the 23-year-old woman dubbed “Nirbhaya,” or “fearless,” awoke real rage in the population.
Hoping for a ride home from a movie theater last December, she and a male companion boarded a private bus, not realizing that the six men aboard had been cruising Delhi in search of a victim. After knocking her friend unconscious, they took her to the back of the bus and raped her, then penetrated her with a metal rod, inflicting grave internal injuries. An hour later, they dumped them out on the road, bleeding and naked. She died two weeks later of her injuries.
Young men and women, mobilized through social media, joined protests that spread across India, demanding tougher laws and more effective policing.
“As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel,” Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful female politician and the president of the governing Congress Party, said at the time. “Today we pledge that the victim will get justice.”
Also see: India kills law allowing convicts in Congress
After intensive public discussion of the case, some changes followed with extraordinary speed. Reports of rape have skyrocketed; in the first eight months of this year, Delhi’s police force registered 1,121 cases, more than double the number from the same period in 2011 and the highest number since 2000. The number of reported molestations has increased sixfold in the same period.
Over 8,000 women are killed every year over dowries!
The government created a fast-track court for rape cases and introduced new laws, criminalizing acts like voyeurism and stalking and making especially brutal rapes into a capital crime.
My $alacious and $en$ationali$t media $eems con$umed by them.
Scholars have delved into the social changes that may be contributing to the problem, as new arrivals in India’s huge cities find themselves unemployed and hopeless, stuck in “the space below the working class,” as the writer Rajrishi Singhal recently put it in an editorial in The Hindu.
That doesn't excuse it!
But many were thinking of something more basic — punishing the six men (one, a juvenile, got a three-year sentence in August, and the driver was found dead in his cell in March) who attacked the woman in the bus that December night. It was those people who found their way to Saket courthouse on Friday. Many came like pilgrims, hoping to find closure in a case that had haunted them.
A 62-year-old grandmother, Arun Puri, had scribbled the words “Hang them! Hang them!” on her dupatta, a traditional scarf. Asked whether she felt sorry for the defendants’ parents, she did not flinch. “If these men were my children,” she said, “I would have strangled them to death myself.”
Rosy John, 62, a homemaker watching the furor outside the courtroom, said her only objection to the death sentence was that it was too humane a punishment.
“After death, they will get freedom,” she said. “They should be tortured and given shocks their whole life.”
In fact, it is unlikely the four men will be executed swiftly. The order must be confirmed by India’s High Court, and all four defendants may appeal to the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president for clemency. Some 477 people are on death row, inching through a process that often drags on for five or six years.
Three people have been executed since 2004, and there were no executions for eight years before that.
Sadashiv Gupta, who defended one of the men, a fruit seller named Pawan Gupta, said he had assured his client that the sentence was likely to be commuted to life in prison.
“I told him, ‘You are going to get the death penalty, take it in stride and don’t panic,’” said Gupta, outside the courthouse. “I think he shall not be hanged.”
"4 convicted in rape case that transfixed India; Sentencing is today, with some calling for death" by Ellen Barry | New York Times, September 11, 2013
NEW DELHI — Four men were convicted of all charges Tuesday in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman who was attacked when she boarded a bus in New Delhi last December, bringing a bitter close to a case that tore open the subject of sexual violence in this rapidly changing society.
The last and most urgent question — whether any of the men will receive the death penalty — will be answered Wednesday, when they are sentenced at a morning hearing. The family of the victim has demanded death sentences, and much of the public seemed to share their anger, flooding the streets last year to demand swift punishment in the case. Police here were braced for protests that might follow the sentencing.
The crime stood out for its horror, even in this sprawling and chaotic city.
The woman was returning home from a movie with a male friend and boarded a private bus with a group of men, mostly working-class migrants who the police said had been drinking. While the bus circled Delhi, the men attacked the pair, knocked the woman’s friend unconscious, and took the woman to the back of the bus and raped her, sometimes using a metal rod. The two were dumped on the roadside, naked and bleeding.
The woman died two weeks later of her injuries.
Her death seemed to open a vault here, and nine months later reports of rape still saturate the country’s newspapers — whether because of increased attacks or increased reporting is not clear.
Along with the dowry deaths, right?
Under pressure to respond to the surge of public anger, the government toughened laws on sexual violence. But the drumbeat of fresh reports offers little hope that this society has confronted the problem, and foreign women have become increasingly wary of traveling to India.
I suppose they should be given what has happened to tourists.
After the verdict, a group of protesters stood outside, five of them men wearing black hoods, with heavy nooses looped around their necks. Young women stood with them, holding the ropes aloft.
“Hang the rapists! Hang the rapists! Hang the juvenile! Hang the juvenile!” they chanted.
Vikas Tyagi, 31, who was with the group, said he thought executions were necessary to put an end to rapes.
“Only fear can stop it,” he said. “We are the youth of India. We are her voice.”
The prosecution benefited from detailed witness statements given by the victim before she died, and from her male companion, who came to court in a wheelchair to testify. But despite the establishment of special fast-track courts for sex crimes, it has moved slower than many hoped, unfolding under unprecedented scrutiny.
One defendant, Ram Singh, who was driving the bus at times during the assault, hanged himself with his bedsheet in his Delhi prison cell this year as his cellmates looked on. His family said he had been subjected to sustained abuse while in custody, and at one point had been forced to drink urine. They believe he was murdered by the police....
I thought that when I first read it.
--more--"
Related:
"The gang rape of the young woman in December has provided a test for an ambivalent country."
Now Indians are ambivalent?
"Death penalty set in India’s notorious gang rape case; Decision brings rejoicing, and some skepticism" by Ellen Barry and Betwa Sharma | New York Times, September 14, 2013
NEW DELHI — There was no mistaking the whoop of joy that rose outside Saket District Court on Friday, when word got out that four men convicted in last December’s horrific gang rape and murder had been sentenced to death by hanging. People burst into applause. They hugged whoever was beside them. They pumped the air with their fists.
“We are the winners now,” said a woman holding a placard. Sweat had dried into white rivulets on her face, but she had the look of a woman who had, finally, gotten what she wanted. And it was true: A wave of protests after the December rape have set remarkable changes in motion in India, a country where for decades vicious sexual harassment has been dismissed indulgently, called “eve-teasing.”
Are there any winners here?
But some of India’s most ardent women’s rights advocates hung back from Friday’s celebration, skeptical that four hangings would do anything to stem violence against women, a problem whose proportions are gradually coming into focus.
“I think a lot of people were hugging each other because they thought this evil is localized, and it will be wiped out, and that is not the case,” said Karuna Nundy, a litigator who has argued before India’s Supreme Court. “The sad truth is that it is not a deterrent.”
From the moment it broke, the story of the 23-year-old woman dubbed “Nirbhaya,” or “fearless,” awoke real rage in the population.
Hoping for a ride home from a movie theater last December, she and a male companion boarded a private bus, not realizing that the six men aboard had been cruising Delhi in search of a victim. After knocking her friend unconscious, they took her to the back of the bus and raped her, then penetrated her with a metal rod, inflicting grave internal injuries. An hour later, they dumped them out on the road, bleeding and naked. She died two weeks later of her injuries.
Young men and women, mobilized through social media, joined protests that spread across India, demanding tougher laws and more effective policing.
“As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel,” Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful female politician and the president of the governing Congress Party, said at the time. “Today we pledge that the victim will get justice.”
Also see: India kills law allowing convicts in Congress
After intensive public discussion of the case, some changes followed with extraordinary speed. Reports of rape have skyrocketed; in the first eight months of this year, Delhi’s police force registered 1,121 cases, more than double the number from the same period in 2011 and the highest number since 2000. The number of reported molestations has increased sixfold in the same period.
Over 8,000 women are killed every year over dowries!
The government created a fast-track court for rape cases and introduced new laws, criminalizing acts like voyeurism and stalking and making especially brutal rapes into a capital crime.
My $alacious and $en$ationali$t media $eems con$umed by them.
Scholars have delved into the social changes that may be contributing to the problem, as new arrivals in India’s huge cities find themselves unemployed and hopeless, stuck in “the space below the working class,” as the writer Rajrishi Singhal recently put it in an editorial in The Hindu.
That doesn't excuse it!
But many were thinking of something more basic — punishing the six men (one, a juvenile, got a three-year sentence in August, and the driver was found dead in his cell in March) who attacked the woman in the bus that December night. It was those people who found their way to Saket courthouse on Friday. Many came like pilgrims, hoping to find closure in a case that had haunted them.
A 62-year-old grandmother, Arun Puri, had scribbled the words “Hang them! Hang them!” on her dupatta, a traditional scarf. Asked whether she felt sorry for the defendants’ parents, she did not flinch. “If these men were my children,” she said, “I would have strangled them to death myself.”
Rosy John, 62, a homemaker watching the furor outside the courtroom, said her only objection to the death sentence was that it was too humane a punishment.
“After death, they will get freedom,” she said. “They should be tortured and given shocks their whole life.”
In fact, it is unlikely the four men will be executed swiftly. The order must be confirmed by India’s High Court, and all four defendants may appeal to the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president for clemency. Some 477 people are on death row, inching through a process that often drags on for five or six years.
Three people have been executed since 2004, and there were no executions for eight years before that.
Sadashiv Gupta, who defended one of the men, a fruit seller named Pawan Gupta, said he had assured his client that the sentence was likely to be commuted to life in prison.
“I told him, ‘You are going to get the death penalty, take it in stride and don’t panic,’” said Gupta, outside the courthouse. “I think he shall not be hanged.”
