Posts Tagged ‘false rape’
Honorable Justice Verma Committee
This is with reference to the invitation for suggestions on amendments to Criminal Laws relating to Safety and Security of Women. I do believe that laws can protect people but I also strongly believe that laws can only protect people from the aggression of that particular offender. So, if the idea is to prevent an incident like Delhi gang rape from happening ever again in the main land of India, IMHO, we need to take a three step approach (not quick-fix workarounds) as listed below; sorted based on priority.
- Strengthen self defense laws so as to make it people-friendly as opposed to governance-friendly.
- Overhaul the criminal justice system to deliver quality judgments on a time bound manner.
- Improve and standardize law enforcement procedures.
Strengthen self defense laws
It is impractical and impossible to give police protection to every single women in this country. Historically, Indian police and law enforcement authorities have been posing the major threat to women. And it is a known fact that nearly 99% of them evade the legal process and go scott free. Any steps towards that path will be doing more harm than even an ounce of good. This is where Gandhiji’s words makes more sense than anything else; “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” [Autobiography page 446].
All citizens have the natural god given right to self-defense, which is recognised by the Indian Constitution as well as the Indian Penal Code, however this right is meaningless without the right to have the tools of self-defense! Honorable bench of Supreme Court (D.K. Jain, H.L. Dattu) ruled in Sikandar Singh & Ors. vs State Of Bihar on 9 July, 2010
25.It is well settled that the burden of establishing the plea of self defence is on the accused but it is not as onerous as the one that lies on the prosecution. While the prosecution is required to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, the accused need not establish the plea of self defence to the hilt and may discharge the onus by showing preponderance of probabilities in favour of that plea on the basis of the material on record. In Vidhya Singh Vs. State of Madhya Pradesh16, this Court had observed that right of self defense should not be construed narrowly because it is a very valuable right and has a social purpose. (Also see: Munshi Ram & Ors. Vs. Delhi Administration17; The State of Gujarat Vs. Bai Fatima & Anr.18 and Salim Zia Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh19.)
The only hindrance to citizen’s right to self defense is now the Government of India. I humbly request the honorable commission to seriously consider urging the government to amend Indian Arms Act 1959 and Arms Policies/Rules in a way that self-defense tools can be made available to the law abiding citizens as easy and cheap as knives and axes. Had any one of those couple who boarded the bus in Delhi carry a fire arm this heinous crime would have never occurred. Just by showing the gun or firing a warning shot could have prevented it, or in worst case scenario they could have injured the offenders if not take their life.
Showing Sandy Hook school shooting for denying this right doesn’t attract any merits because 99% of mass shooting spree in America happened in gun-free zones. (The offenders know that there will be zero resistance!) In Britain as well, when their government imposed a gun ban, crime rate went up 40%. [Handgun crime ‘up’ despite ban – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1440764.stm]
Overhaul the criminal justice system
1) Stop Abuse of The Legal Process. Consider false accusations equally heinous as the allegation itself. (conviction rate of criminal cases are under 30%. 70+% are false or fabricated or have no locus standi)
2) Take perjury as a serious offense and punish the wrong doers so as to reduce the abuse of law and free up the resources.
3) Stop Media Trial that influence and create hindrances in legal process.
4) Multiply the number of courts/benches 100 times (if needed) to deliver time bound verdicts. I believe, Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.
5) Remove hard coded “PRESUMPTIONS” from the statutes and let Judiciary apply its mind. Judging based on presumptions is tantamount to lawlessness!
6) Remove categorical exemptions in the process based on caste, creed and gender.
7) Implement complete judicial reforms including but not limited to make erring judges accountable.
a) Amend criminal procedure code to include trial by jury.
b) Let all courts have division benches rather than trial by single judge, to reduce human errors in making rational decisions. (If supreme court has more than 50000+ pending cases that is a clear indication that our lower courts are delivering crap)
c) Include judiciary in Public Service Commission to SELECT judges based on quality, rather than ELECT/NOMINATE them. If Judiciary is to be kept away from legislative system, then introduce Judicial Service Commission so as to ensure the quality of judges.
d) Implement a perceptual monitoring system similar to PMP in which managers have to undergo several assignments and meet certain criteria to maintain the ‘status’. Those who cannot maintain the ‘status’ should be disqualified to judge other people’s life. This will ensure maintain and improve the quality of judgments.
Improve and standardize law enforcement procedures.
It is time to quarantine the age old unscientific thuggish colonial style of investigation. It is worth imitating the most modern investigation procedures followed by developed countries like sexual assault forensic evidence (SAFE) kit, Sexual offense evidence collection (SOEC) kit or Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK) kit. This way our law enforcement officers know how to deal with a sexual assault case and what all data/evidences that they need to collect in order to ensure a higher rate of conviction.Such a kit consists of small boxes, microscope slides and plastic bags for collecting and storing evidence such as clothing fibers, hairs, saliva, semen or body fluid, which may help identify the assailant and provide evidence supporting prosecution in a criminal trial.
Although a kit’s contents may vary, it may include:
- Instructions
- Bags and sheets for evidence collection
- Swabs for collecting fluids from the lips, cheeks, thighs, vagina, anus, and buttocks
- Blood collection devices
- Comb used to collect hair and fiber from the victim’s body
- Clear glass slides
- Envelopes for preserving the victim’s clothes, head hair, pubic hair, and blood samples
- Nail pick for scraping debris from beneath the nails
- White sheets to catch physical evidence stripped from the body
- Documentation forms
- Labels
Most importantly there should be ample amount of forensic labs which should ensure no more than a weeks delay in delivering the results/reports. For fully implementing all the suggestions made above we can raise the funds by abandoning the invasive, tyrannical and illegal UID/Aadhaar project and divert the funds for building the most needed long overdue criminal justice infrastructure in less than 2 years time.
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Out of the pain felt from the backlash of pro-family Men’s group several women organizations are under deep distress; that are busy putting together a theory to counter the startling realities brought into light by Save Indian Family advocates.
Pro-family groups and activists are facing collective badmouthing from those who are hell bend on destroying the social fabric at the tunes of external globalist evil forces like CFR, Builderberg, USAID etc from which enormous amount of funds flow endlessly.
One of such Tamilnadu based organization even did a survey and over 100 page report, only to solidify the findings and arguments made by Save Indian Family advocates.
The core of this report clings on to the aspect of rising complaints, not conviction as pointed out by pro-family groups. This is a food for thought for the readers to find the logic in the presumption that “increased number of complaints indicates increased number of crime”. If it is so, then what is the need to spend huge amount of money and several years for investigations and trials. There will only be the need of Jails where people register complaints and they can put all the accused behind bars.
The SHOs interviewed opined that educated and employed young married girls are becoming self-centered due to their economic self-reliant. They are too sensitive and highly emotional as they don’t share the ethos and values imbibed by the members of the matrimonial family. They have less tolerance level and are against joint family system. Many complainants prefer to live separately with their husbands and as a result arises conflict with husbands and in-laws. Their parents rather than advising her mostly fuel their daughter’s emotions and supported her decisions.
Though they claim no charges were framed on such complaints, one can easily understand that it is to safe guard their jobs and hide their own black deeds. Is that ever happened in the history of this planet that the culprits admitting the crime for the purpose of preparing a report?
The SHOs also shared that the women develop an attitude that if they incorporate dowry component in the complaint petitions, it increases the severity of the offence. People develop a wrong perception that only dowry complaints are entertained by the police. Even the advocates have similar views; misguide their clients and prepare the petitions with a tone of dowry harassment.
It will be repetition of the same petition to amend 498a if I start pointing out the entire survey report here. Aggrieved by the findings and lack of arguments to counter the pro-family advocates, women organizations are now blaming “Patriachy”; ignoring the fact that it is the same “Patriachy” which enacted this law. They claim that low conviction is not because of false allegations or lack of evidences to prove the offence but because of the mind-set of Judiciary!
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Final Conviction Rate at the level of Appeallate Courts |
||||||||||
| Chennai | Coimbatore | Cuddalore | Dindigal | Kanchipuram | Kanyakumari | Madurai | Salem | Sivagangai | Trichy | Virudhunagar |
| 1.9% | 7.7% | 7.5% | 1.0% | 15% | 1.9% | 1.7% | 2.9% | 2.9% | 2.7% | 5.1% |
Though the Conviction Rate for the offences under Sec 498A in Trial Courts is 20%, the final conviction rate declined to an average of 3.2%. The report invariably blames Judiciary with no mention of the chances of corruption in lower courts resulting in higher rate of convictions. It says “The mismatch between the conviction rate in trial courts and appellate courts raises a serious question about justice delivery system and the legal safeguards for women victims.”
In short EKTA / AIDWA and their likes are claiming that, in matriarchal mind-set false allegations are “Genuine” and a stated “women’s right”! The report showers blessing and praises to those who make false allegations saying “Further, due to the constant attempts by various organizations women started complaining about dowry harassment to the police; of course it is a healthy sign.
I would like to borrow the words from Smt. C.P.Sujaya IAS (Retd) and appeal the women organizations with a slight modification, “It is now time – in this new century – for the women’s movements to go in for a measured exercise of collective and honest soul-searching.”
Slut Walk – A National Shame
Posted on: June 19, 2011
Media is projecting Slut Walk in India as an initiative by 19 year old Umang Sabarwal, a journalism student at the Kamla Nehru College in South Campus. If a girl of this age is having a discreet sexual relationship with a guy of same age and later break up for whatever reasons, she, along with her parents will file RAPE charges on the guy. Media will drum it up as “19 year old guy LURED an innocent girl for his sexual perversions”.
I’m just trying to point out the double standard that media and our legal system takes in two different scenarios. Not so long ago we saw a 12 year old girl accusing domestic violence against her father. Here also the “prudence” of this minor girl got glorified rather unmasking the nauseating attitude of her mother to misuse children to fight her divorce battle!
Apparently, I don’t understand what is this hue and cry all about? Rape in Delhi is actually decreasing. Those who know how to read numbers know that rape in Delhi is decreasing. Media is giving false alarm to get more readers. In the past decade population of Delhi has grown several folds but number of rape has not grown proportionately. Another crucial thing that people should understand is what exactly a “Rape” as per the law is. Not many people, I doubt even Umang Sabarwal, are aware that as per Indian Penal Code, “sex under false promise of marriage” is also considered to be “RAPE”. Also look at the kind of number which is in discussion right now; A total of 489 rape cases were registered last year as compared to 459 in 2009, based on reports from Delhi Police Commissioner B.K. Gupta. Last year Pune police reported that 74% of rape cases were consensual sex. Looking at the current trend of false accusations, this figure gives you the indication that 30 more guys got trapped and blackmailed in 2010!!!
Above all, how can we reach a conclusion that an offense has been committed just by looking at the number of cases registered? If that would be the case, then why would we spend a lot of money on running courts, trials and police? All we need is just jails. People can give complaints in jail and the authorities can put the accused behind bars with out any investigation or fair trial! Isn’t it? The need of the hour is not Slut Walk, but Sexual Intimidation Law. Other related demands that men put forward are mentioned in my ‘About page’.
Recently I read about a substandard article published in DNA praising “Slut Walk”. This article illustrates ideologies of Umang Sabarwal, Neha Jayshankar, 22, a sociology student in JNU, Diya Manjrekar, 35, a guest lecturer on Culture and Social Studies in Delhi University and Shilpa Phadki a writter. Their ideologies prove that these women seem to have very low level of IQ! They are against objectifying women but what they are doing is protesting for the rights to wear sexually provoking attires and thereby objectifying themselves ! How dumb? Isn’t it? The language used by the Canadian police officer was inappropriate but the message was loud and clear; “If women don’t want to be sexually assaulted, they should avoid dressing like sluts.” The message is, if women strip in public, men get the signal that “here comes a sex object”. No one is imposing burkhas for women here; all they have been asked for is to take responsibility for their own actions.
No one will accuse the pedestrian for his injuries/death who recklessly cross the highway and run over by the fast moving vehicles. Everyone knows the all the vehicles come with breaking system and expect them to stop in order to avoid a wreck but that doesn’t mean that there will never be a wreck. Its not blame-the-victim theory, it’s all about taking responsibility of one’s own actions. No wonder Barbara Kay, a famous columnist in Canada says “Feminism is dead, what you see is just whining”.
Union Health Ministry has decided to make the per vaginal (PV) test optional for rape victims in order to save their right to privacy. In other words the “victim” can refuse PV test even if the interrogation officers insist so. Being a pro-rights activist I’m glad that India government is recognizing and respecting the rights of its citizens. But what I don’t understand is how is Government of India going to protect the fundamental right, to live with dignity, of more than half of the population? I mean, how are men going to protect themselves from false rape accusations?
Indian patriarchal laws even recognize consensual sex by false promise of marriage as rape. The new sexual assault bill under the consideration of parliament is going to bring all kind of sexual offenses under one umbrella and treat it as rape!
Not so long ago, Pune police reported that more than 70% of reported rape cases are consensual sex. Guys and girls fall in love and if at a later point when girl gets pregnant and her family don’t agree with the relationship, in order to save the face she reports rape. In some cases women report rape in order to blackmail successful guys for marriage. Some times this blackmailing is to wreck vengeance or for extortion. These are all well known facts and numerous men are languishing in jails for no fault of theirs and their loved ones undergoing endless trauma.
When a man attacks a woman, that act is definitely going to leave his skin cells on the victim’s body. Forensic evidences make the prosecution stronger and bring maximum punishment to the offender. Above all, it gives the accused a fair chance to prove his innocence. Not to mention that Indian patriarchal laws do not recognize a woman as sex offender! Invariably, this so called progressive move puts men in the most vulnerable situation where the chances of getting his dignity and social status smeared in dirt become ten fold high.
Men in general are not aware of the possible trauma that they, along with their family and loved ones, may face sooner or sometime in their life time. The most abused law that India has ever witnessed, the infamous IPC 498a, when enacted in 1983 was beyond the wildest imagination of law makers or common people that the abuse would go to this extent. When a shop owner reports theft and claim insurance the first thing that cops do is to make sure whether or not the theft is real. Application of common sense seems to be considered as an offense by Indian law makers when it comes to women centric laws.
Interestingly, most men even feel it “insensitive” to point out the necessity of forensic examination. I don’t know if it is obsession towards certain organs or starvation of physical needs that made them feel so. I’m asking those people who feel that talking against relaxing the rape probe is an insensitive act, will you be ready to feel sensitive and accept the jail sentence when a woman falsely accuse you of rape?
Trapping high profile men in sexual harassment cases has become a trend in the very recent past. Reports from various quarters of government and non governmental organizations have exposed a lot of truth to the extent that society quit buying rape cases. More and more people are becoming legally literate to understand that what comes in the package of “rape” is not what they have been taught by movies, but its genuine consensual sex, being used as Rape after break up or to wreck vengeance or to make money.
May be this is the reason why we hear less about rape and that too GANG rapes, once in a long while, and hear quite often about sexual harassment cases. You might have noticed that since the Sexual harassment bill is on the table of parliamentary committee, this trend and its pace has increased all of a sudden and beyond our imagination. The peculiarity of those cases that came up since the bill is on the table is that, its all from the chosen sectors which the bill ought to give protection; Sports, Movie, Airline, Army, Educational institutions and even pubs! A wide majority of those cases are already proven prima facie false.
Instead of finding the reasons and orchestrators what Men should do is to demand a law to protect them and their family from such sexual intimidations. Below is the draft and will be submitted to the law commission through proper channel after public discussion. Let us all Indian citizens have an open discussion and make it fail proof and fool proof.
Section 503(A). Sexual intimidation
Any woman threatens a man with any unlawful and baseless allegations or files such complaints or publish through print or visual or electronic media, where such allegations are of sexual or obscene or illicit nature and to cause harm to his reputation, or to the person or reputation of any one in whom that man is interested, with intent to cause alarm to that man, or to cause that man to do any act which he is not legally bound to do, or to omit to do any act which that man is legally entitled to do, or to eliminate or demote him from his profession, or to make monetary or professional gains, as the means of avoiding the execution of such threat, commits sexual intimidation.
Explanation-A threat to injure the reputation of any man in whom the woman threatened is interested, is within this section.
Section 506(A). Punishment for sexual intimidation
Whoever commits, the offence of sexual intimidation shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, or with fine not less than 10 lakhs, or with both;
If threat be to cause emotional hurt or suicide of the man or his relatives, or to cause death or grievous hurt by any person or relatives or friends of the woman who makes such threats etc.: -And if the threat be to cause the destruction of his family or any of his relationships, or to cause an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to twelve years, or with fine not less than 25 lakhs, or with both.
Stand up for your rights 