The government has proposed that the offence of rape be made "gender neutral" by amending the law so that sexual assault on men can also be proceeded against under the same statute. It also plans to make specific laws on stalking and acid attacks on women. The change in the rape law is being drafted by the ministry of women and child development (WCD) as part of the criminal law (amendment)...

The Kandhamal violence of 2008 “meets all the elements of crimes against humanity,” said the report of the Justice-A.P. Shah-headed National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal, which was released here on Saturday. The report recommends the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to re-examine the First Information Reports already registered, to file fresh FIRs where necessary and to recommend remedial measures where trials had been vitiated because of intimidation of witnesses...

A report of the National People's Tribunal on the 2008 riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, is out. The report that runs into 197 pages points out that the brutality of the violence falls within the definition of 'torture' under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.   According to the tribunal, headed by Justice A P Shah, communal forces used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation...

The first judgment in a 2002 riots case and the SIT report on the Ishrat Jahan killing go against the Gujarat government. THE verdict in a crucial and long-running case involving a massacre and the investigation report in another case, of alleged encounter killings, both delivered in November, give hope to victims of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat that they will get justice, even if delayed. In the first case, the special...

The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine is a grey area: Justice Ganguly Supreme Court Judge A.K. Ganguly on Tuesday termed death penalty “barbaric,” “anti-life,” “undemocratic” and “irresponsible,” but “legal.” Expressing his “personal views” on the subject, Justice Ganguly said the constitutional guarantee of ‘right to life' could not be subjected to vague premises. The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine in death penalty cases “is a grey area as it depended on the interpretation of...