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Rights groups slam India death sentences
Agence France Presse - September 14, 2013
After a seven-month fast-track trial, Judge Yogesh Khanna said on Friday the four men should be "hanged by the neck til they are dead" for the brutal rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus last December.
After the sentencing, people distributed sweets on the street in celebration and tweeted that "justice" had been served.
But on Saturday, rights network Avaaz slammed the verdict, urging the government instead to launch a mass public education campaign to stop India's "rape epidemic".
"Executing these men won't bring back the woman they raped or reverse India's rape crisis. The only way to stop rape before it starts is with a massive public education campaign," the online activist network said.
Indian newspapers splashed the sentencing on their front pages along with mug shots of the four convicts whose crime shocked the nation and triggered weeks of street protests.
"Showed no mercy, got no mercy" screamed a banner headline in the English language Hindustan Times while the Times of India said "Death for four for dastardly, diabolical, brutal crime".
In the lead-up to the sentencing, there had been a huge clamour for the four – Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh – to be executed for their attack on the physiotherapy student and her male companion on December 16.
The papers, however, wondered if handing down the death penalty in rape cases would make women any safer across the country.
Last year, there were 24,923 cases of rape reported in India, according to the government's official statistics. But the actual figure is believed to be far higher with experts saying women are reluctant to file complaints for fear of social stigma in the socially conservative nation.
An editorial in The Hindu newspaper was scathing in its criticism of the verdict, saying it would serve little purpose other than providing a "false comfort of retribution".
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, died of massive internal injuries on December 29 after being lured on to the private bus by the gang following a cinema trip with a companion.
Kavita Krishnan of the All India Progressive Women's Association said the punishment was hardly going to serve as a deterrent. "In the same court, there were acquittals in 20 out of 23 rape cases. Potential rapists can see how remote their chances of conviction are, leave alone the punishment," she said.
The Hindustan Times said the verdict was "not an occasion to rejoice" because it would not stop sex crimes. To make India safer for women, "we must tackle deep-rooted social problems", it said. Human Rights Watch called the verdict "troubling".
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