Manipur: Court awards death sentence in 2015 rape, murder case; first in state since Independence
According to the police report, the villagers knew about the crime which was settled in a hushed way by compensating the parents of the victim internally.
Written by Jimmy Leivon | Imphal
A district court in Manipur on Tuesday awarded death penalty to a 21-year-old man in a 2015 rape and murder case of a 4-year-old girl. The sentence is first of its kind in the state since independence.
Special judge, POCSO, A. Noutuneshwari Devi, announced the verdict a day after R David was convicted under section 6 of POCSO Act and section 302 of IPC. As per the police report, the victim was raped and murdered at a stable in the vicinity of Maram Kavanam Village in December 2015. The convict was arrested two days later after the Mao police station registered a suo motu case.
Suo motu means the government acted without a family member registering an FIR.
According to the police report, the villagers knew about the crime which was settled in a hushed way by compensating the parents of the victim internally. Following the registration of the case, the body of the deceased girl was exhumed and a post-mortem was conducted in the presence of a magistrate. The reports concluded sexual assault and death from strangulation.
Charges against David were framed on July 5, 2018, after examining 21 witnesses during the course of the hearing.
Terming the case, rarest of the rare, the Judge said, “There is no mitigating factor to deter in other alternative punishment. In my considered view, maximum punishment should be awarded and it should be an eye opener for the society at large in order to prevent such brutal and heinous crime in our society. This court has delivered justice to the victim as well as to the society through earnest efforts made by the investigation agency, especially the then 2nd OC of Mao police station”.
The court also recommended for awarding the compensation of Rs. 25 lakhs to mother of the victim as per NALSA.
Pakistani mom catches tutor
sexually abusing 12 y/o daughter
OKARA - A tutor was nabbed for sexually abusing a girl student repeatedly at his house in Latifabad, the girls' mother alleged.
Widow Shabnam Bibi of Rahim Karim Town used to leave her 12-year-old daughter at the house of Umair at Latifabad. On the day Shabnam left her at the house of the tutor and returned home. Later, she recalled that she had left the keys of her house with her daughter. So, she returned to obtain the key. When she entered the house of Umair there was no one in the house. She went upstairs and saw in a room that Umair was sexually abusing her.
On seeing the widow, the accused escaped. Later, she got a case registered with the A Division police station. The girl said that he had repeatedly raped her forcedly. He had not only made his video film but got his got her signature on a white paper, she said.
He had threatened the girl that if she told her secret to any one, he would put her video on the Facebook. However, the police had arrested Umair while FIR would be registered after medico-legal report of the girl.
Another Pakistani mom finds neighbour
sexually abusing 8 y/o son
SAMBRIAL - A man allegedly sexually assaulted his neighbour's minor child here on Sunday.
According to the Sambrial Police, Khalida Bibi, resident of Sambrial city alleged that her eight-year-old son Kashif was playing in the street. In the meantime her neighbour Aftab took the child his rooftop on some pretext where he sexually assaulted the child.
The woman claimed accidentally went upstairs and found the neighbour abusing the minor. Aftab fled away after spotted mother of the minor. The police have registered a case against the accused.
Another Indian Care Home where
children are sexually abused
Assault on Boys at Arrah Juvenile Home
PTIU
Arrah (Bihar): Close on the heels of the Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal (7th story on post) in Bihar, reports of alleged assault and sexual abuse of inmates at a remand home for juveniles came to the light from Arrah on Wednesday.
Videos and photographs purportedly of inmates at the remand home in Dharhara locality, under the Town police station area, were played by regional news channels and shared on social media. The remand home houses juveniles belonging to Bhojpur and three other adjoining districts.
The videos and photographs showed some of the boys with bruises on their bodies and some of them had also been sodomized, reports said.
Arrah SP Awakash Kumar said there has been information about physical assault on a minor boy and further enquiry is underway. However, he refused to divulge further details.
Police officials have rushed to the spot for investigation, though none of them was immediately available for further comments.
Details like the number of inmates who faced any type of abuse were not known as yet and no FIR has been lodged in this connection yet.
The reports of alleged assault at the Arrah juvenile home, about 60 km from the state capital, comes close on the heels of alleged sexual abuse of minor girls at a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, which triggered nationwide condemnation.
Child gang rape case drives India into maelstrom
by Rosie DiManno
Men in dress shirts thrashing men in dress shirts. A high-pitched shrieking as the targets of all those blows and kicks scrunch their bodies on the floor in a vain attempt to protect themselves.
The melee spills out into a stairwell.
This appalling scene was captured on Tuesday, in an Indian courthouse, where 17 males were brought for a first appearance on charges of gang-raping and otherwise sexually molesting a 12-year-old girl with a hearing disorder over a seven-month period.
Those inflicting the wallops are lawyers. Those receiving them are supposed to be their clients.
Except the Chennai High Court Advocate Association has declared none of their attorneys will take the case to represent any of the defendants.
Two of the accused are police officers.
“So what if a girl died? Many girls die every day.”
- Government Minister
The community’s anger is understandable, expressed in furious and incendiary postings on the comment section of Indian newspapers: Shoot them! Hang them! Burn them!
On the opposite end of the rage spectrum, following the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in a separate incident earlier this year, a government minister who attended a protest rally in support of the accused was anonymously quoted in the New York Times as saying, “So what if a girl died? Many girls die every day.”
There is a sectarian subtext to the rhetoric, with Hindus blaming Muslims, Muslims blaming Hindus, opponents of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party – several of its members have publicly defended the accused – slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for unacceptable silence in the face of high-profile sexual assaults against young girls across the country, and intellectuals tying the can to the long-gone East India Company imposing western culture on India, as if the sexually diabolical were a cascading outcome of laws that abolished suttee and legalized the remarriage of widows.
Long before the East India Company, one of the first Europeans in India declared Indian men the most lecherous of all men, for it was difficult to find a 7 y/o girl who was still a virgin.
I don’t know what any of that has to do with vile crimes against children, but there’s no dispute that India, the most populous democratic country in the world, has been plunged into an existential maelstrom, with many incidents of sexual assault against minors deepening religious, political and ethical divides, as accounts of unspeakable violence grips the public. Vigilante mobs, infused by a lust for vengeance and apparently corralled via rumours on social apps about child kidnappings and assaults, have been responsible for 20 lynching or beating deaths in the past two months, according to Indian media reports.
While a horrified citizenry recoils, a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll released in June named India as the most dangerous country in the world for women, ahead of such war-torn nations as Afghanistan and Syria – a rape occurring at least every 20 minutes, as per data from the National Crimes Records Bureau. Yet India, in recent years, had also been characterized as one of the countries with the lowest per capita rates of rape, according to a UN comparative study.
It’s difficult to reconcile these two counterclaims.
As it should be! The latter data is almost certainly calculated from police records whereas, until quite recently, police bent over backwards to avoid writing a FIR against someone for rape. The situation is improving now, but there are still many police who discourage or outright refuse to write a report on rape. As this and other reports show, police are often involved in rape cases themselves.
According to my calculations, I suspect that a woman or girl is raped in India every 20 seconds rather than 20 minutes.
But there’s little doubt that something sinister happened in Chennai, a coastal city in the southeast, and, in January, in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the latter event, the eight-year-old from a seminomadic Muslim community, was abducted, imprisoned for a week in a temple – so says the police charge sheet – drugged, starved, repeatedly raped before she was slain and her body thrown into the forest. One of the accused was also a police officer, and, claims the prosecution, asked his co-conspirators to hold off killing the child so that he could rape her a last time. Sex crimes against children are hardly exclusive to any country on the planet or any ethnicity. Toronto has sadly seen its share of them.
Jammu and Kashmir have the distinction of having one of the worst paedophiles (3rd story on link) the world has ever seen. Aijaz Sheikh has reportedly raped or sexually abused at least 5000 children in his role as a 'holy man'. Jammu and Kashmir do not have POCSO laws in place and their judicial system is not only short of 21st century standards, they don't even qualify for 20th century standards. This monster has been on trial for many months with delay after delay because someone doesn't show up. It might be the accused, a lawyer, or even the judge. You can follow this story on Facebook.
These states need to wake up; they are losing a generation of children, and they don't seem to care. If India is the most dangerous country to be a child, and I don't doubt that for a second, the Jammu and Kasmir are leading the way.
There’s an extra dimension of savagery, however, in the “Chennai Horror,” as it’s being called, which provoked the chaotic courthouse brawl on Tuesday. Police say the men allegedly took turns raping the child, feeding her drinks laced with drugs, and videotaping the assaults – in them they are brandishing knives – threatening to make the contents public if the girl told her family.
The girl lives with her mother in an upscale gated community apartment complex, with a jungle gym and a pool, home to some 350 families in multiple blocks. The child’s businessman father resides in another city with an older daughter. It was the sister who, on a visit home last week, concerned about the younger’s girl fatigue and depression, first raised suspicions. When the 11-year-old finally revealed her harrowing experience, the family filed a complaint with the local all-women police department. (India has about 200 all-female police substations, formed specifically to investigate and help curb gender crimes.)
All of the defendants worked in the complex, in security, as elevator operators, handymen and housekeeping staff.
Police say the first sexual assault was by an elevator operator who subsequently encouraged others, including colleagues, to join the episodes of sexual wretchedness, most of it taking place in isolated niches of the complex and vacant units, in the evening, when her mother believed her to be playing with other kids.
“They threatened the child at knife-point,” said the captain of the all-woman police station, after arresting the men. “This is the worst crime this world has seen yet, as far as I’m concerned. Few of them raped her; some have fondled her during this act. Some others have sexually harassed her, while others have watched the assault video. They are all guilty, because not one of them tried to stop this brutality. They will all be punished.”
Three of the accused are in their 60s, four in their 50s, three in their 40s, the rest in their 30s and 20s. They have been variously charged with aggravated penetrative sexual assault, sexual assault, harassment upon a child, attempted murder and criminal intimidation. Since the news exploded, women who live at the complex have taken it upon themselves to guard the community, also preventing both journalists from entering and citizens from the wider city whoíve been demonstrating for swift, lethal justice against the defendants.
“If left to us, we will murder them with our bare hands,” one woman told the Times of India. “How can they do this to a small child?'”
Victim assistance groups have also been barred, despite arguing that every child in the complex must be questioned about sexual abuse, because they do not believe that there was just one victim.
The alleged crimes are sickening. But sexual terrors inflicted on children are apparently hardly unknown across India, especially in rural towns and villages where local justice is malleable and many such crimes go unreported, with families fearful of reprisals, or vengeance is exacted directly.
The mob has no patience with jurisprudence, with reports of men attacked, even killed, for simply offering candy to children or striking up conversations. The atmosphere has become that tense and fraught with menace. India is no different, in the promulgation of fake news, circa 2018 – claims of child kidnappings, harvesting of children’s organs, gang rape – with appeals to baser human instincts, in a nation of more than 200 million social media users. The real, the allegedly real, is bad enough.
The 10 Most Dangerous Countries For Women
It's not surprising that at least 7 of these countries are predominantly or significantly Muslim
By Thomson Reuters Foundation
Seven years ago a Thomson Reuters Foundation experts’ survey found the five most dangerous countries for women were Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia. This year we set out to see if the situation had changed.
We wanted to find out whether more was being done to address the overall risks faced by women, and specifically regarding healthcare, access to economic resources, customary practices, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking. We expanded our poll to the 10 most dangerous countries with some surprising results.
World leaders vowed three years ago to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls by 2030, allowing them to live freely and safely to participate equally in political, economic and public life. But despite this pledge it is estimated that one in three women globally experience physical or sexual violence during their lifetime.
Child marriage is still rife, with almost 750 million women and girls married before their 18th birthday, resulting in teen pregnancies that can put their health at risk and limiting schooling and opportunities. Here are the results of the survey, listing the top 10 most dangerous countries for women. Number 10 may surprise you.
1. India
India was named as the most dangerous country for women after coming fourth in the same survey seven years ago. The world’s second most populous nation, with 1.3 billion people, ranked as the most dangerous on three of the topic questions – the risk of sexual violence and harassment against women, the danger women face from cultural, tribal and traditional practices, and the country where women are most in danger of human trafficking including forced labour, sex slavery and domestic servitude.
Violence against women in India has caused national and international outrage and protests since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in New Delhi. As India’s rape epidemic gets worse by the year, critics have pointed fingers at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for not doing enough to protect women.
2. Afghanistan
Afghanistan was ranked as the second most dangerous country for women after topping the poll in 2011. Nearly 17 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, many women still face dire situations daily despite Western donors pumping billions of dollars into the country. Afghanistan ranked as the most dangerous country for women on three of the topic questions – the most dangerous in terms of non-sexual violence such as conflict-related violence and domestic abuse, the worst access to healthcare, and a lack of access to economic resources and discrimination over jobs and land.
Afghanistan was listed as 171 out of 188 countries in the United Nations Development Programme’s 2015 global Gender Inequality Index. The United Nations has accused the Afghan state of allowing widespread gender brutality to go unpunished by failing to prosecute criminal violence against women who are often confined to the home and seen as subordinate to men.
3. Syria
Syria was named as the third most dangerous country for women after seven years of civil war which has decimated services across the country and killed about 510,000 people. Some 5.5 million Syrians are living as refugees in nearby countries and another 6.1 million of the 18 million population are still in Syria but forced to flee their homes.
Respondents ranked Syria as the second most dangerous country for women in terms of access to healthcare and regards non-sexual violence which includes conflict-related violence as well as domestic abuse. Syria was a joint third with the United States with regards to the risks women faced of sexual violence and harassment and named seventh worst for lack of access to economic resources.
4. Somalia
Somalia was ranked as the fourth most dangerous country for women after coming fifth in the 2011 poll. The impoverished country located in the Horn of Africa has been mired in conflict since 1991 with the government struggling to assert control over poor, rural areas under the Islamist militant group al Shabaab. The United Nations has estimated about 6.2 million people in Somalia – half the population – need emergency aid, such as food, water and shelter, due to the conflict and unprecedented drought.
The poll ranked Somalia as the third most dangerous country for women in terms of access to healthcare and for putting them at risk of harmful cultural and traditional practices. Somali was named as fifth worst country in terms of women having access to economic resources, tied ninth when it came to non-sexual violence such as conflict-related violence, and tied 10th on sexual violence.
5. Saudi Arabia
The conservative kingdom was named the second worst country in terms of economic access and discrimination which includes job discrimination, discriminatory property rights, and an inability to make a livelihood. It came fifth in terms of the risks women face from cultural, religious and traditional practices, and seventh regarding non-sexual violence including domestic abuse.
Saudi Arabia has made headlines in recent years for moves to boost female participation in the workforce from the current 19 percent and for lifting a decades-long ban on women driving. But customary gender segregation in most workplaces still limits the way in which women can be employed and a guardianship law by which women need permission from a male relative to travel abroad, marry and other activities remains in place. Saudi Arabia has come under international fire in recent months for the arrest and jailing of some women’s rights activists.
6. Pakistan
Pakistan was named as the fourth worst nation when it came to economic resources and discrimination in the workplace and regarding land, and also regarding the risks women faced from cultural, religious and traditional practice including so-called “honour” killings. Pakistan ranked fifth when it came to non-sexual violence including domestic abuse, and joint seventh regarding sexual violence and harassment.
World Bank data shows almost one in three married Pakistani women report facing physical violence from their husbands although informal estimates are much higher. Rights groups say hundreds of women and girls are killed in Pakistan each year by family members angered at perceived damage to their “honor”, which may involve eloping, fraternizing with men or any infringement of conservative values regarding women.
7. Democratic Republic of Congo
The United Nations has warned that millions of people face hellish living conditions in DRC after years of factional bloodshed and lawlessness. About 4.3 million people have been displaced amid endemic violence, including machete attacks and gang rape, with NGOs saying this year that women and children were being exposed to the “worst sexual abuse ever”.
The vast Central African country ranked as the second most dangerous country for women as regards sexual violence. It ranked between seventh and ninth in four other questions including non-sexual violence, access to healthcare, economic resources and cultural and traditional threats.
8. Yemen
Yemen ranked poorly on access to healthcare, economic resources, the risk of cultural and traditional practices and non-sexual violence.
Saudi Arabia and regional arch-foe Iran are locked in a three-year-old proxy war in Yemen that has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced three million and pushed the impoverished country to the verge of starvation. Yemen is still reeling from the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis where 22 million people needed vital assistance.
9. Nigeria
Nigeria was ranked as the ninth most dangerous country for women with human rights groups accusing the country’s military of torture, rape and killing civilians during its nine-year fight against Islamist insurgency Boko Haram. The conflict has killed more than 30,000 people and spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Africa’s most populous country was named as the sixth worst nation regards the risks women face from cultural and traditional practices and tied 10th when respondents were asked about the risks of sexual violence. But Nigeria was named as the fourth most dangerous country along with Russia when it came to human trafficking. Studies have shown that tens of thousands of Nigerian women have been trafficking into Europe for sexual exploitation.
10. USA
The United States ranked as the 10th most dangerous country for women, the only Western nation to appear in the top 10. The United States shot up in the rankings after tying joint third with Syria when respondents were asked which was the most dangerous country for women in terms of sexual violence including rape, sexual harassment, coercion into sex and the lack of access to justice in rape cases. It was ranked sixth for non-sexual violence.
The survey was taken after the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment went viral in October last year as Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 70 women, some dating back decades. Hundreds of women have since publicly accused powerful men in business, government and entertainment of sexual misconduct and thousands have joined the #MeToo social media movement to share stories of sexual harassment or abuse.
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