Thursday, April 4, 2013

New Laws Concerning Crimes Against Women in India

   
On Thursday India's Parliament passed a bill to take on stronger penalties on men who attack women and also to criminalize offenses like stalking and voyeurism. They are waiting on President Pranab Muhkerjee to sign the bill into law shortly. Less than three months ago a New Delhi physiotherapy student was gang-raped on a moving bus and later she died from her injuries. The incident called in for a change and drew outrage and protests over the issue of women's safety. In recent years reported rapes in India have risen and northern India has witnessed a series of highly publicized gang rapes. Many Indians protested that the government should do more to protect women and make sure harsher sentences were put on the men. The law increases the punishment for sex crimes including gang rap, gives repeated offenders subject to the death penalty, and defines as crimes actions. The new law also forces stricter punishment for police officers that fail to properly register the complaints of sexual assault.

My opinion of the new law is that I think it is a good idea that they’re now finally trying to make it better in India. From all of the news articles that I have seen or read, I’ve noticed that before it seemed like that didn’t really try to do anything to protect the women for sexual assault. We’ve also seen a lot of sexual assault in the book Q&A (the book we are reading in our Language Arts class) and the book mostly just shows how badly some places in India can be. I still wonder even though they are going in the right steps but are the citizens and police actually going to carry out the law and make sure it actually gets followed through? I also believe even though it may not give full protection that it will make it a lot safer for women in India.
(WC 319)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/world/asia/india-bill-toughens-penalties-for-attacks-on-women.html?_r=0

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