Supreme Court Verdict On Nirbhaya Case Is Laudable, But Can It Help Reduce Crime Against Women?

The rapists and murderers of Nirbhaya will be hanged to death. Today, the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for rapists, who brutally gangraped and assaulted a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16, 2012.

The review petition was filed by three of the four convicts in the gangrape and murder case.?

The court made no further observations, stating that everything has been laid out in its verdict upholding the death sentence in May, 2017.

Mukesh, 29, Vinay Sharma, 23 and Pawan, 22, accused of raping and brutalising a 23-year-old paramedic student along with three others, had appealed against the death penalty awarded to them.

The fourth convict, Akshay Singh, 31, did not file a review petition, while the fourth convict committed suicide in jail in 2013. The sixth, a minor at the time of crime, has been released.

The gangrape case led to massive uproar in the country with people coming out on streets protesting the lamentable law and order situation in the country, especially when it comes to crimes committed against women.

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“Where a crime is committed with extreme brutality and the collective conscience of the society is shocked, courts must award death penalty, irrespective of their personal opinion as regards desirability of the death penalty. By not imposing a death sentence in such cases, the courts may do injustice to the society at large, said Justice R Banumathi in the judgement on May 5, 2017.

The 429-page judgement was a scornful attack on level of safety of women in the country.

Stringent laws yet crime against women rampant

In 2016, India recorded 106 rapes per day, highlighting the mammoth rate of crime rate against women despite a series of court rulings and toughening of laws to deal with the peril. Excruciatingly, the numbers only rise with little redressal of complaints and eventual conviction.

Appalling crime rate against women?

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The NCRB data reveals that 2,60,304 cases of crimes against women were sent for trial in courts in 2016. The conviction was secured in 23,094 cases. Also, reported in 2016 were 206 cases of acid attack on women, while 7,236 women were stalked.

The Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case seemed like a watershed moment. With widespread protests, legal reform seemed possible. A week after the dreadful Nirbhaya gangrape case, the Justice JS Verma committee was set up to review criminal laws and recommend amendments to them. The Committee’s huge 644-page report formed the basis of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013, after first being implemented as an ordinance.

The 2013 Act expanded the definition of rape to include oral sex as well as the insertion of an object or any other body part into a woman’s vagina, urethra or anus.

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The punishment for rape was also made stringent. The courts’ discretion to give rapists a sentence lesser than the minimum of seven years was abolished.

Cut to 2018, nothing has changed.

The recent Human Rights Watch report found that despite improved laws and policies, tenacious attitudes towards and condescending views of rape victims still pose massive barriers to victims getting support services and justice.

Since the laws were strengthened, there has been a 39 per cent increase in rape complaints reported to the police, according to Human Rights Watch, which implies that the new laws have had some positive effect.?

Contrary to this, the report also found that despite the increase in willingness to report sexual violence, there are still obvious gaps in the implementation of these policies and cases are still regularly handled improperly, meaning the survivors are not necessarily getting justice.

“Executions Will Not Eradicate Violence Against Women”

Just an hour after the Supreme Court verdict on the case, Amnesty International released a statement opposing the death penalty to convicts.

“Unfortunately executions do not eradicate violence against women. There is no evidence to show that the death penalty acts as a deterrent for sexual violence or any other crime. Instead, the government must allocate adequate resources for the effective implementation of laws, improve conviction rates and ensure certainty of justice in all cases. Even the Justice Verma Committee, whose recommendations were relied upon to reform laws on sexual assault and rape, had opposed imposing the death penalty in cases of rape”, said Asmita Basu, Amnesty International India’s Programmes Director.

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The statement added:

“All too often lawmakers in India hold up capital punishment as a symbol of their resolve to tackle crime, and choose to ignore more difficult and effective solutions like improving investigations, prosecutions and support for victims’ families. Far-reaching procedural and institutional reforms are the need of the hour.”

Supreme Court’s verdict on the Nirbhaya case is laudable. Rapists and murderers must not be let free. But a lot needs to be done to make this country safe for women.