Delhi rape case: Demand for death penalty for rapist's increases, Delhi Police take some protesters into custody

New Delhi:  April 21 (ANI): Even as the public clamours for giving the death penalty to rapists, police in Delhi took several protesters into preventive custody on Sunday.

A demonstrator fell unconscious while protesting the brutal rape of the five-year old girl in New Delhi, and demanding more safety for women.

An irate protester, Shikha Rai, said the police and the government should take adequate security measures for the safety of women in the country.

She added: "Our demand is to make safe a safe place for women. We elect government for the security and safety of the people and if they or if Delhi police are unable to provide that security that I think, we will have to come out and take care of ourselves."

Meanwhile, reports of protests against the rape of a five-year-old are coming in from other parts of the country.

Protesters took to the streets raising slogans, demanding a harsh punishment for the man suspected of raping the five-year-old girl who is battling for her life at a hospital in New Delhi.

To express solidarity with the five-year-old girl, protesters shouted slogans against Delhi Police and the Union government demanding the resignation of Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar.

An agitated protester, Neelam said, "We are demonstrating against the brutal incident done by an animal like human being with the small girl. We demand resignation of Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, as during his tenure, another horrifying incident happened after the December 16 incident. Attitude of police has not changed. They still do not lodge FIR and the family of victims is asked to compromise and shut their mouth. We want to ask them as to what is their role? What is their duty? Is it to make the victim keep quite or to help them?"

Lashing out at United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a protester Sharda, urged the government to hang the accused.

"The biggest problem is that the culprits are not being punished due to which they are fearlessly raping women. I just want to say that in such cases, the culprits should be hanged to death or else women will have to find ways to protect themselves," said Sharda

A woman also fainted while raising her voice against the safety for women during the protest. She was immediately taken to the hospital for treatment.

The victim, whose parents work as labourers and live in the eastern neighbourhood of Delhi, went missing on April 15.

Police found her with bruise marks on her body in the suspect's house in a semi-conscious condition on Thursday after her parents had registered a complaint.

Delhi police had arrested the 25-year-old man for the rape of the child from arrested from Muzaffarpur town in India's eastern state of Bihar. The man was taken into transit custody to be brought to New Delhi.

The rape, which left the young girl in a critical condition, revived memories of the brutal gang rape by five adult men and a teenaged boy of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus on December 16 in New Delhi. That woman died of her injuries.

Earlier Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement that he was deeply disturbed by the latest incident. In December his administration had faced criticism for failing to respond to public anger over the horrific attack on the physiotherapy student.

Singh's government passed tougher laws to fight gender crimes in March, putting in place new provisions and tougher punishments, which include criminalising voyeurism and stalking and making acid attacks and human trafficking specific offences.

Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/delhi-rape-case-demand-death-penalty-rapists-increases-121825672.html

Further attacks on women in Delhi raise doubts over crackdown Incidents follow measures such as fast-track courts after gang rape and murder of student sparked outcry

• Jason Burke in Delhi
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 March 2013 13.17 GMT

Indian women protest in New Delhi after the gang rape and murder of a student in December. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP

A recent spate of attacks on women in Delhi has renewed fears over the safety of women in the Indian capital and raised doubts over the efficacy of reforms introduced since the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in the city last December.

Two women are reported to have been raped by multiple attackers in moving cars in separate incidents in recent days. A third woman was robbed and then raped by two men after taking a motorised rickshaw in the satellite city of Ghaziabad at the weekend.

Four victims under 18 were also assaulted in incidents reported to the police over the past four days, according to local media. Only a fraction of such attacks are ever reported in India.

The gang rape and murder in December shocked the nation. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in India calling for widespread legal and policing reforms as well as a wholesale shift in cultural attitudes towards women.

A series of measures – such as fast-track courts for sex crimes, harsher punishments for convicted offenders and gender training for policemen – have been introduced since the attack by authorities. The government was heavily criticised for its early lack of sympathy for protesters.

The finance minister last week announced a new fund of £120m to improve the safety and empowerment of India's women.

But reporting a 124% rise in reported rape cases in Delhi since the attack and a nearly sixfold rise in cases of harassment, the Hindustan Times newspaper said "the harsh reality is Delhi hasn't changed for the better, it has become worse".

Police officials say the rise is the result of officers taking complaints more seriously and a broader awareness in the city of what constitutes harassment. Five men and a juvenile are on trial for the attack on the student in December, which took place in a private bus moving on crowded roads on a Sunday evening.

The adults accused face the death sentence if convicted. Experts have suggested a variety of causes for the new wave of violence against women ranging from stereotypes of aggressive masculinity projected by Bollywood films to a clash of cultures as millions of men raised in rural areas arrive in cities where women enjoy greater freedoms. Conservatives blamed "westernisation", opposing a broadly rural, supposedly authentic India with an increasingly urban, globalised one.

Recent research in Delhi has revealed more mundane causes for high levels of violence and harassment. The lack of safe public transport in Indian cities is one major factor with "eve teasing", as sexual harassment is euphemistically known, endemic on overcrowded buses. A lack of toilet facilities in slum areas which forces tens of millions of women to use open ground at night is another.

A commission set up to examine possible measures to combat the wave of violence against women received tens of thousands of suggestions from the general public. In the southern state of Kerala officials areconsidering the distribution of "electronic bangles" which could send a signal to the nearest police station in the event of an assault.

There are some signs of change. Jason Temasfeld, an activist campaigning against sexual harassment in India's commercial capital of Mumbai, said there had been a "drastic change" in awareness in recent months. "Women know much more what to do and about their rights. And other people are much more vocal in reacting to harassment when they witness it. Even the police are more responsive," he told the Guardian.

The victim of the December attack was dubbed "Nirbhaya" or "the fearless one" by media in India for fighting back during the assault and for recording a statement despite massive internal injuries before she died. She will be posthumously awarded the US state department's international women of courage award on Friday by Michelle Obama, it was announced earlier this week.

19-yr-old school girl gangraped in moving auto

GHAZIABAD: When she flagged down a share auto-rickshaw, little did she know that she would be gagged, beaten, gang-raped, robbed and then dumped by three men near the busy Shipra Mall, an important landmark in Indirapuram. 

The 19-year-old woman did not feel uncomfortable to get into a shared auto-rickshaw, as it's a common practice in the area.

The men who raped the woman later confessed to the police that had stolen the vehicle.

NDTV quoted the woman saying that she cried for help for two hours but no one came forward to help her.

The channel also says that the auto rickshaw passed through six police posts.

Two of the three men involved in the incident have been arrested. "All three are in their twenties," Superintendent of Police Ghaziabad rural Jagdish Sharma said.

The class 12 student, who was raped by three men, had fought hard to save herself from her assailants, police here said.

Police claim the victim, who was on her way home after meeting a friend, was forced by two of the men - who posed as passengers - to sit between them. They gagged her once the vehicle developed some mechanical fault near Khoda colony, 2 km from the mall, and stopped.

Fault taken care of, the three-wheeler sped towards Ghaziabad city. And once it reached Galand, the men dragged the woman out, beat her up when she resisted, and then took turns to rape her, a police officer told HT.

Around 10.30pm, the three men fled the spot, but only after they had robbed the victim of whatever cash she had on her person and her mobile phone.

In her statement to the police, the girl mentioned that the rod on the window had broken; she also informed them that the vehicle had a black tarpaulin sheet that covered the windows and served as a curtain of sorts.

The girl had earlier resisted a diversion in the route of the vehicle - while the men had initially told her they were headed towards Delhi, they later took a U-turn and drove in the opposite direction.

When the girl questioned the change of direction in the vehicle, two of the men sat beside her and gagged her.

After raping her in the vehicle, the men dragged the 19-year-old out into the fields near Bankey Bihari Dental College and again raped her, taking turns. 

The vehicle's owner, Prem Singh, said three men in an inebriated condition had taken the vehicle from its driver, Pintu, in broad daylight on March 2.

The men had been driving to Delhi in the vehicle, and had stopped at Khoda for some repairs to the tempo. At around 8.30 p.m., they were near Shipra Mall.

After committing the crime, the men left the girl in the fields and fled.

They took with them Rs.400 that the girl had with her, her ATM card and mobile phone.

Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/19-yr-old-school-girl-gangraped-in-moving-auto-114004900.html