India\u2019s cabinet has approved the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12, after Narendra Modi, the prime minister, held an emergency meeting in response to nationwide outrage in the wake of a series of cases.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s controversial executive order, or ordinance, amends the criminal law to also include more drastic punishment for convicted rapists of girls under the age of 16 years, government officials said.<\/p>\n
India launched fast-track courts and a tougher rape law that included the death penalty after an assault on a young woman shocked the country in 2012, but India\u2019s rape epidemic has shown no sign of dying down.<\/p>\n
There were 40,000 rapes reported in 2016. The victims were children in 40 percent of those cases.<\/p>\n
However, Kirti Singh, a women\u2019s rights activist, has said capital punishment is unlikely to act as a deterrent in such cases; instead, the authorities should instead focus on carrying out proper investigations and legal processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudies have shown that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent. Our experience shows the same. We are against death penalty,\u201d she told Al Jazeera from New Delhi.<\/p>\n
\u201c[In the recent child rape cases], there was a complete breakdown of law and order. It wasn\u2019t as if just because death penalty doesn\u2019t exist, there was this breakdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people in India act with impunity, thinking that they won\u2019t be punished. The certainty of the punishment, rather than the severity of it, should be made sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some activists want the government to set a timeframe for bringing suspects to justice as Indian courts are notorious for delays, with more than 30 million cases pending.<\/p>\n
According to Abhay Singh, an Indian lawyer, \u201cthe conviction rate in rape cases in India was only 28 percent, implying that 72 out of 100 suspects are going unpunished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s cabinet has approved the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12, after Narendra Modi, the prime minister, held an emergency meeting in response to nationwide outrage in the wake of a series of cases. Saturday\u2019s controversial executive order, or ordinance, amends the criminal law to also include more drastic punishment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64301,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64296\/revisions\/64301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}