NEW DELHI -- A 5-year-old girl has died after being raped in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, an official said Tuesday, in the latest in a series of brutal attacks that have sparked outrage in the country.

The girl suffered cardiac arrest and died late Monday at a hospital in Nagpur city in neighbouring Maharashtra state where she was being treated for injuries from the April 18 assault, said Bharat Yadav, collector for Seoni district, where the attack occurred.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack, he said.

The girl was lured by one of the men to a farm, where she was then raped by the other man, who was a friend of her parents, Yadav said. The parents, poor construction workers, were at work when the attack occurred, he said.

Ravi Manadiar, an administrator at the hospital, said the girl suffered a brain injury when the men tried to smother her cries and was in a coma from April 20 until she died.

In Nagpur, the mother of the girl was inconsolable.

"The court should give them the strictest punishment ever," she sobbed Tuesday.

"These men should be burned alive so that the whole world will see how such criminals ought to be punished," she said, wiping her tears with the corner of her sari.

About 40 supporters of the opposition Congress party held a rally in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, to protest what they said was a rise in violence against women in the state.

They burned an effigy of the state's top elected official, Chief Minister Shivraj SIngh Chouhan, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Earlier this month, another 5-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped and tortured by two men who then abandoned her in a locked room in New Delhi. She is still recovering at a hospital in the city.

Police refused to register a case when the girl's parents reported that their daughter was missing. Hundreds of people protested outside police headquarters in New Delhi for three days, angry over allegations of police inaction and indifference to the parents' complaints.

Indian media have begun to report sexual assaults more aggressively since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in December. That attack triggered outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country, and spurred the government to pass tougher laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rapes that lead to the victim's death.

Ram Singh, the prime accused in the December 16 gang rape of a 23-year-old girl, allegedly committed suicide in a high-security cell in Tihar Jail early on Monday morning.

NEW DELHI: A 22-year-old woman was shot dead at Sarai Kale Khan bus stop in southeast Delhi at around 8.30pm Sunday, after she allegedly resisted a molestation bid by two men on a motorcycle.
“The men attempted to molest her and force her on to their bike at which a scuffle broke out. When she objected, they shot her,” a Delhi Police officer said.
The victim, identified as Pooja, was shot thrice. A passerby informed the police and she was rushed to AIIMS Trauma Centre where she was declared dead. The fatal injury was a bullet to the head, said doctors.
One of the men, Munshiram from Bihar, has been arrested. Police said he was drunk. “We have identified both assailants as residents of Abu Fazal Enclave area,” the officer said.
A man who claimed to be the victim’s husband revealed that she was a resident of east Delhi’s Bhajanpura.
The incident occurred on an evening when the Capital was on high alert following a general intelligence input to all metropolitan city police forces to be vigilant in the wake of the Hyderabad terrorist attack.
It also comes just three months after the brutal gang rape of a trainee physiotherapist in a moving bus, and at a time when police presence on the Capital’s roads is said to have been increased.
Recently, the justice Usha Mehra committee had said the Delhi Police could not escape blame for the December 16 crime and had faulted it for lax patrolling after dark.

Source: Hindustan Times

NEW DELHI: Afzal Guru, convicted of plotting the Parliament attack 11 years ago, was quietly executed at Tihar jail early on Saturday. The hanging was carried out in dramatic secrecy amid fears that it could revive street protests in Kashmir.

Guru was convicted of plotting and providing logistic support to the five Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who stormed Parliament on December 13, 2001. The attack was foiled, the terrorists killed and a packed House of lawmakers saved, but not before eight security personnel and a gardener lost their lives. A tenth victim, a journalist, died of injuries a few months later.

The hanging is being seen as Congress’ renewed attempts after the party’s recent Jaipur conclave to appeal to the urban middle class. As the UPA government dithered on taking a decision on his mercy plea for years, Afzal came to symbolise what the BJP called the Congress’ soft approach on terrorism. The hanging of Afzal, and before him 26/11 killer Ajmal Kasab last November, blunts this attack.

On Saturday morning, a quiet but unrepentant Afzal was hanged in Jail No. 3 of Tihar prison at 8am, less than a week after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected the mercy petition filed by the convict and his wife more than six years ago. Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and home secretary RK Singh separately stood in front of TV cameras to announce the hanging.


“Afzal Guru was hanged at 8am. All legal procedures were followed,” Shinde told reporters. He was later buried on the jail premises.

RK Singh said Tihar authorities had intimated Afzal’s family in Kashmir of the rejection of his mercy plea through Speed Post and registered post and the DG (director general of Jammu & Kashmir Police) had been told to check with them whether they had got it or not.

The BJP was quick to welcome the hanging. Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley said: “Though belated, justice has been done.” Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has often used Afzal to attack the UPA, tweeted: “Der aaye durust aaye (better late than never).”

Information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari insisted in Chennai that politics did not have anything to do with the execution, a point the home secretary also made in Delhi.

In Sopore, Afzal’s hometown in north Kashmir, and many other places in the Valley, security forces imposed curfew, detained separatist leaders and shut down cable TV networks. Chief minister Omar Abdullah appealed for peace and ordered police to exercise restraint in handling street protests. By evening, 36 people — mostly policemen — had been injured in stray violence.

Source: Hindustan Times

BHAGALPUR (BIHAR): In a grim reminder of the horrific Delhi rape case, a woman who got down from a Delhi-bound train in Bhagalpur district, was gang-raped, killed and her body hung from a tree in a mango orchard.

Police said the 32-year-old victim, who was a passenger of the Brahmaputra Mail, that was travelling to the national capital, was dragged to the mango orchard and gang-raped by unidentified persons after she alighted from the train between Vikramshila and Kahalgaon stations.

She was strangulated and her body hung from a tree late on Saturday night. Police recovered the body on Sunday and sent it to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Bhagalpur for post-mortem.

The victim, who hails from New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, took the train from Alipore to Delhi, along with her son. As the train was jampacked, she tried to get down at Sahibganj but was prevented from doing so by co-passengers, ASP, Bhagalpur, Meenu Kumari said.

When the train slowed down between Vikramshila and Kahalgaon stations, she jumped out. It is not clear why she took this step.

A group of inebriated people then dragged her to a nearby mango orchard and sexually assaulted her.

Liquor bottles were found at the spot, Kumari said. A railway ticket and cellphone number of her village pradhan written on a piece of paper was recovered from the victim's possession, police said.

One of the hottest debates going on right now is on who should be the next prime minister of India? Let me share some of my views.

Rahul Gandhi, who was recently made the vice president of the Congress party, comes across as a welcome change to many people as India needs more young blood in the political system. That's true but is that one factor enough? Can we trust someone who hasn't proven his capabilities as a leader yet with running the biggest democracy in the world? 
He tried campaigning for his party actively in the UP elections and failed badly. He didn't make any concrete statements during the campaign and his party did worse this time than the previous elections.
He is known to make statements like "One night I woke up at 4 in the morning".

When we compare his track record with that of Narendra Modi, we see a huge difference. 
Narendra Modi has proven his mantle time and time again, winning 3 elections in his state in a row. Everyone knows about the kind of development and growth Gujarat has witnessed over the last 10 years. The GDP growth of Gujarat was the highest among Indian states for a long time and was recently taken over by Bihar.

One of the biggest factor against him is the Gujarat riots. Many people hold him responsible for those riots. It doesn't matter much if he really was responsible or not, it's the perception of the people that matters the most.

The BJP has a tough challenge at its hands. Should it risk projecting Narendra Modi as the PM candidate or not? If there's risk, there's a big reward as well. The popularity of Narendra Modi among the urban population could lead to a big swing in favour of the BJP.

I think that given a chance, Narendra Modi can change the India we know. According what I know right now, Narendra Modi seems to be a much better PM candidate.

What do you think?
Udit

BJP MLA from Agiaon, Shivesh Kumar, his wife and their six-month old baby were seriosuly injured in an alleged incident of molestation and assault by a bunch of railway employees in an AC-2 coach of Danapur-Howrah express.   As per the complaint, the incident happened on Friday night, when Kumar, son of former union minister Muni Lal, boarded the train at Patna Junction to attend a family function. He had reserved two berths for the purpose. When the train reached Rajendra Nagar, around 17-18 people boarded the train.

"Two berths opposite ours were booked in the name of an MP. They were vacant. This group of people sat there and started vulgar talk. My wife protested but they did not stop. She complained to the TTE on duty Jitendra Singh. He said, all are railway staff and assured us there will no problem," said Shivesh over phone from Howrah to HT.

When the train left the next station, Patna Saheb, the trouble makers took our liquor bottles and started drinking. The MLA opposed this and was beaten up for it.

"They threw whisky on my wife and forced themselves on her. They also made phone calls to somebody asking to get ready to kill a couple at Mokama. I somehow managed to pull the alarm chain," added Shivesh.

The train stopped and the ordeal got worse. Another on-duty TTE, Akhilesh Kumar came and started fighting with me for stopping the train. Since the group was a big one, none of the other bonafide passengers dared to interfere. In the melee, the wife of the MLA showed presence of mind and dialled the Women's Helpline number.

The train started again and reached Khusrupur station where some policemen arrived after being alerted by the helpline people. They barged into the compartment and nabbed two of teh alleged molesters- Pankaj Kumar Sinha (TTE at Muzaffarpur) and Saurabh Singh (booking clerk at Rajendra Nagar). The rest of them managed to escape. Additional force was called at Bakhtiarpur station and a search was conducted, but to no avail.

An FIR was lodged under sections, 307, 354, 341, 323, 504 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against all the accused including railway employees of commercial sections who were going to West Bengal for training.

The MLA accused the TTE and police on duty in the train for not coming to their rescue despite knowing their situation. Railway sources said, the rogue staff had no valid tickets and were travelling illicitly, perhaps by managing the on-duty TTEs.

ADG PN Rai (Railways), said a copy of the FIR would also be sent to Railway authorities for departmental proceedings.

NEW DELHI: The Delhi gang rape case had its first major impact on Friday as the cabinet approved the death penalty for rapists who cause grievous physical or mental damage to their victims — such as leaving them in a permanent vegetative state — among a host of changes to laws on crimes against women.

Showing unprecedented urgency by choosing not to wait for Parliament’s budget session that is 20 days away, the government approved an ordinance that includes key recommendations of the Justice JS Verma panel, and went beyond it to bring in the death sentence — the demand of millions of protesters in the wake of the brutal crime.

The ordinance will become law as soon as the President signs it, and requires Parliament’s approval within six months, which the government plans to complete in the budget session.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh convened the special cabinet meeting soon after he met Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the morning. A few hours later, senior Congress leaders had another round of meetings where home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde presented the broad contours of the proposed ordinance.

Though the government had kept a two-day window at the start of the budget session to consider passing bills relating to women, government sources said the Congress leadership opted for the unusual step of issuing the ordinance to placate public sentiment. It was also decided to leave out the Verma panel recommendation of lowering the age of consent for sex from 18 to 16 years. Finance minister P Chidambaram, oil minister Veerappa Moily and law minister Ashwini Kumar had reservations on any hurried decision on this count. The FM said it would be premature to take a call at this stage since the government is yet to discuss all suggestions received from different sides and also, the parliamentary standing committee report on the Verma panel is awaited.

The panel’s recommendation to make marital rape a criminal offence was also not accepted.

The ordinance lays down a comprehensive framework for dealing with crimes against women and replaces the word 'rape' with a wider definition of sexual assault.

The new law provides for varying punishments for rapists, depending on the gravity of the crime. A rape conviction will lead to imprisonment ranging from seven years to life, while gang rape will invite a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Rapists who cause death of a victim will automatically invite the murder charge, which carries the death penalty in rarest-of-rare cases.

NEW DELHI—She called him "a perfect man." He still keeps her number stored in his cellphone, under the name Jewi, derived from a Sanskrit word meaning life.

"She was the closest person to my heart," says the young man. Soon he is expected to tell a judge about the night she was raped aboard a private bus here, an attack that left his friend dead and the world horrified.

"I find myself surrounded by the pictures in my mind of the incident of that night in the bus," says the 28-year-old information-technology specialist, who was himself badly injured in the Dec. 16 attack. Broad-chested and plain-spoken, he now walks with a cane.

Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, he gave new details of the assault and described his close and complex relationship with his friend, a petite recent college graduate who was 23 at the time of her death. Both her name and his are being withheld due to Indian law governing the identification of the woman as a rape victim.

The case has stirred widespread protest and calls for justice. Five men face charges including rape, kidnapping and murder. Lawyers for the five say they are innocent. A sixth person accused, a juvenile, faces proceedings in juvenile court. A lawyer representing him couldn't be reached.

In many ways, the young man and his friend were a modern dating couple, yet still bound by caste and tradition. Living away from home, the two were making their way in India's widening professional class—she was a physiotherapist looking for her first job, he leads a team specializing in Internet voice technology for corporations.

The 23year old delhi rape victim, Aruna Shanbaug and Saumya rape case are just few examples from the very many that India is " famous " for .The inhumanity of the human race is so evident that the future of this country that boasts of a burst of culture is shamed to the very core and seems bleak now .
Nevertheless we Indians prove our nationalistic and humanitarian sides by protesting all over the country and spending a black new year. 
Yes, this ironic Indian society speaks too , and speaks after a long time but  speaks at the very least. 
We are now on the thresh hold of new reforms , reforms for the betterment but the success of it depends on the implementing and the implementing depends on the society. 
While the government is gearing up for general elections and Rahul gandhi taking over as congress party's prime minister candidate there is hope that this new political motivation will sum up to faster reforms being made.
This fickle society needs a change, and this change will come with the change in our basic attitude.

- Puja Raghavan (Volunteer)