Women’s groups have demanded a comprehensive legislation to address rape and sexual assault. A delegation that met Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily earlier this week, said there was a need to incorporate various substantive and procedural sections in the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act to deal with child sexual assault and sexual assault against women. Archaic definition In a memorandum to the Minister, the...

Is there a breakdown of rule of law and the Constitutional order in Chhattisgarh? Some of India’s most respected civil society organisations certainly think so, though the State Government disagrees. Several citizens’ organisations have written to the authorities, the courts and even the Prime Minister, about police excesses during the ongoing Operation Green-hunt that the government forces, their paramilitaries and vigilantes have waged on the armed Maoists. (See links below)...

Women’s groups, organisations and individuals have appealed to Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily to amend the laws on sexual violence at the earliest, arguing that there is an urgent need for strict and exemplary action against any state functionaries who conspire to deny justice to victims of sexual violence. The organisations and individuals, coming under the banner of ANHAD, called for a time-bound national discussion on ways to democratically advance...

She was a minor; her alleged assaulter a man with clout. The police initially turned her away; while a decade later, her case is still on in courts. And while Ruchika Girhotra’s tragic story may have got the nation’s and government’s ear, no one remembers the then 13-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly gangraped on the night of the Dhuleti festival, a day after Holi, in a Vadodara village by...

Police will now have to file an FIR on every complaint, the Union home ministry said today, ending the decades-old practice of lodging general diaries that allowed the law-keepers to sit on complaints without investigation. The move is a fallout of the high-profile Ruchika Girhotra molestation case where Haryana police had initially refused to file an FIR (first information report), apparently because the accused was a senior officer. The ministry is expected...