India sentences three to death, 24 to jail for gang rapes

1
137

MUMBAI/ NEW DELHI-

An Indian court on Friday ordered three men to hang after they were convicted of two gang-rapes, the first death sentences to be handed down for multiple sex attacks since the law was toughened last year.

A judge handed down the sentences at a court in Mumbai following the trio’s conviction for the two separate attacks at the same abandoned mill compound in the city last year, including an attack on a photographer that made global headlines.

Meanwhile in New Delhi, one man was sentenced to life and 23 others to varying prison terms on Friday for raping a teenager who was kidnapped and held for several weeks in southern India 18 years ago, a prosecutor said.

The 16-year-old victim was abducted in 1996 and raped in homes, hotels, cars and public buses by the attackers over the next one and a half months. The men convicted in the case Friday included a retired professor, lawyers, businessmen and government officials.

Prosecutor Anella George said the high court in Ernakulam town in Kerala state sentenced 23 of the defendants to 7 to 11 years in prison.

India’s justice system moves notoriously slow, but a brutal gang rape and murder in New Delhi unleashed public anger over the treatment of women and a long-unspoken epidemic of sexual violence. Faster trials were among the changes in the legal system as a result.

In that December 2012 case, four men were sentenced to death for attacking the 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in New Delhi.

In the Kerala case, a court had acquitted all but one of the accused in 2005. But India’s top court ordered a retrial last year, which was completed in six months, George said.

1 COMMENT

  1. Now Pakistan Law Enforcement Agencies including Judges should learn something from it, if even a spark of conscience and dignity remains with them!

Comments are closed.