India will now execute child rapists. Thoughts?

"The Indian government approved a new measure on Saturday that will prescribe capital punishment for anyone convicted of raping children under the age of 12."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/21/india-approves-death-penalty-child-rapists/538932002/

I understand that hanging is the main method of execution in India

I'm torn on this. What about non-adult child rapists, the mentally ill and the possibility of executing an innocent person?

But India has a bad record of protecting women and girls, who are routinely victims of so-called honor rapes, forcing them to walk naked in town streets or stripping school girls naked in the classroom for not doing homework.

Maybe this will help?

EDIT: Apparently, the law only applies to rapists of girls. Men who rape boys get a pass on the hangman.

EDIT2: Found this. It explains the new law.

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/what-is-the-new-ordinance-on-rape-under-criminal-laws-5146208/

There's also this:
"India's Supreme Court Rules That Sex With A Bride Under 18 Is Rape"
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/12/557347037/india-s-court-gives-brides-age-15-to-18-protection-from-marital-rape

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

AcidBurn

The court system has as 30 million case backlog and a rape conviction rate of less than 30%.

This looks more like PR move than anything else.

SW-User

@AcidBurn
true but if it takes even one scumbag off the planet..

strongbow · 46-50, M

@AcidBurn 30 million rape cases or cases in general?... if its cases in general they should separate rape cases from all other crimes and deal with them accordingly

AcidBurn

@strongbow The article didn't say. Separating rape cases won't solve the underlying problem of an overburdened court system.

strongbow · 46-50, M

@AcidBurn True, but considering how much of a problem rape is in India they could and should address the problem

AcidBurn

@strongbow How much of a problem is it? I'm curious why the conviction rate is so low. Is rape a huge problem, but the burden of proof is too high? I can't imagine a high number of false allegations is keeping the conviction rate so low, but it's possible.

SW-User

@AcidBurn
India is very much a patriarchal society..
a woman's word carries very little weight in local courts where male judges see women as little more than property...
and homeless children are especially vulnerable...
family members might actually defend a rapist to save family honour...

AcidBurn

@SW-User I had a feeling that was the case. All the more reason this law is basically useless.

SW-User

@AcidBurn
yes, sadly true..
there have been a number of high profile rape cases of late, one involved an 8 year old girl...
there have been violent demonstrations..
this is the government's response.

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

@AcidBurn Here's why rape convictions are so low:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/asia/for-rape-victims-in-india-police-are-often-part-of-the-problem.html

NEW DELHI — Not long after telling the police that she had been raped, a woman from South Delhi looked out her apartment window and saw the man who had attacked her laughing with an officer who had given him a ride back from the police station.

“That officer then came over and asked me why I wanted to file a complaint,” the 30-year-old mother of two said in a recent interview. “He said I would be ridiculed unless I agreed to settle things without an investigation.”

After months of intimidation from her rapist and indifference from the police, she got a politically powerful acquaintance to intervene, and her rapist was finally arrested. A court case is under way.

A far more prominent case, the brutal gang rape on a bus in New Delhi last month, and the later death of the victim, has led to an anguished re-examination in India of many of the nation’s age-old attitudes toward violence against women. But even as India grapples with the polarizing issue, a powerful force stands in the way of any fundamental change: a police force that is corrupt, easily susceptible to political interference, heavily male and woefully understaffed.

SatanBurger · 36-40, F

@AcidBurn Also (not to spam here lol) just I forgot to mention from the article that I think should be mentioned here:

The treatment of women by the police is such a concern that laws now forbid officers to arrest or even bring women in for questioning during nighttime hours. In case after case, the police have used their powers to deliver abused women into the hands of their abusers.

Police reforms have been proposed for decades, but few have been put in place, because many of them involve making officers less susceptible to political meddling — something politicians have little incentive to seek.

Of all the problems affecting the police, many women’s advocates point to cultural tradition as the most intractable.

Even as India has undergone an economic upheaval that has brought millions of women out of the home and into urban workplaces, a profound attachment to female sexual virtue remains deeply embedded in the Indian psyche. The foundational texts of Indian culture — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, ancient Sanskrit epics — both revolve around the communal outrage that results from insults to a good woman’s modesty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/asia/for-rape-victims-in-india-police-are-often-part-of-the-problem.html