-The Indian Express Death penalty for sexual offences against children is misconceived. Ordinance is doomed to fail Reactionary law reform has always been an easy way for governments to appear tough on crime, and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 is no different. It betrays a lack of thought on the likely impact, and only serves to endanger the lives of future victims. The five state reports of the Centre for Child and...

-The Hindu The focus must be on enhancing rape conviction rates and taking steps to rehabilitate and empower survivors Amid belligerent demands for capital punishment for rapists, on Sunday the President signed an ordinance that introduces the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. But this clamour for introducing the most stringent punishment has conveniently sidestepped the more cogent criticism of the systemic failures in addressing...

-The Indian Express The poor conviction rate in cases of child rape goes to show that death penalty - which comes at the sentencing stage, post-convictions — will mean little to a vast majority of the victims. Two telling sets of figures from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) put a question mark on the effectiveness of death as a deterrence for child rape. In 2016, of the 64,138 child rape...

-The Hindu Ordinance on rape a knee-jerk reaction, says activists Death penalty for rape of girls upto 12 years will deter the victim and their families from reporting such crimes instead of acting as a deterrent for criminals, said activists who slammed the government for its “knee-jerk reaction” in bringing an ordinance on the issue. “In cases of child sexual assaults we know that most of these crimes are committed by people...

-Hindustan Times Despite a rare, legal victory, Dalits of Mirchpur are back on the streets — to fight for the SC/ST Act that helped them win a case seven years ago. Mirchpur, Hisar (Haryana): Gulab Singh, 80, is frail and bent with age. He hobbles around with a wooden stick at the makeshift camp he lives in, outside Haryana’s Hisar city. But on April 2, defying his body and age, he marched...