-The Indian Express On the Delhi rape case, let’s keep the indignation, disturb legislative slumbers The Verma Committee Report (VCR) speaks against civil society and political rape cultures. The poignancy and urgency of the VCR owes much to the experience of conversing with rape survivors and traumatised children. A precious message of the VCR is this: one may not take law reform seriously without taking human and social suffering equally seriously. The committee...

-Outlook Gujarat government will be launching `Help Emergency Assistance Rescue Terminal' (HEART), a helpline which would enable women seek police help instantaneously through mobile phones. Additional Chief Secretary, Home, S K Nanda told PTI that the helpline would be launched on March 8. Initially, it would be operated in Ahmedabad on a pilot basis before being tried in other parts of the state. The toll-free helpline number would be announced on the same...

-Outlook  Marital rape will also attract stringent punishment under the ordinance proposed by the Centre. Sex by husband with his wife during separation without consent will lead upto seven years of imprisonment, according to the proposed ordinance on anti-rape law approved by the Union Cabinet yesterday. Justice J S Verma Committee recommended deletion of IPC's Section 376A (Intercourse by a man with his wife during separation) under which currently maximum punishment is two...

-CNN-IBN While the Cabinet has approved a new law after examining Justice Verma Committee recommendations on punishing sex offenders, women groups have called the ordinance a dilution of the Verma panel recommendations. This came as the ordinance passed by the Cabinet remained silent on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Reports say that women groups will protest against the ordinance in the capital. Meanwhile, former IPS officer and activist Kiran Bedi welcomed...

-The Indian Express The Union Cabinet Friday allowed capital punishment for those convicted in extreme cases of sexual assault and a minimum prison term of 20 years for gangrape, as it approved an ordinance to strengthen laws to help fight sexual crimes against women. The ordinance implements many recommendations of the Justice J S Verma panel that was constituted after the December 16 gangrape of a 23-year-old woman in a bus in...