-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Same-sex rapes by fellow prisoners trigger most jail suicides, the National Human Rights Commission has said in a report, swivelling the spotlight to the administration of prisons and the plight of inmates. While such abuses were hardly a secret to many, this is the first such official acknowledgement by a rights panel or government organisation. The study was prompted by the suicide of a suspect in the Delhi...

-The Hindu As the proposed amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, passed in the Lok Sabha on May 7, faces the Rajya Sabha hurdle, several child rights experts have begun to challenge its premise for treating adolescents accused of heinous crimes on a par with adults. Their primary contention is that the basis for proposing such amendments for stringent action is flawed and unlikely to act as a deterrent. Victim, not...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Centre's stand against making marital rape a criminal offence saw legal bigwigs take a divided stand. Some like the former Union law minister, the foremost legal mind on criminal law Ram Jethmalani and former Supreme Court judge K T Thomas supported the Centre's view that the law must not be changed, while legal luminary Soli Sorabjee said it was time to make rape within marriage a...

-IPS News NEW DELHI: Vinita Panikker, 26, considers herself “the world’s most unfortunate woman”. Three years ago, a jealous husband, who suspected her of having an affair with her boss at a software company, poured a whole bottle of hydrochloric acid on her face while she was asleep. The fiery liquid seared her flesh, blighting her face almost entirely while blinding her in one eye. What remains today of a once pretty visage...