For representational purpose.
For representational purpose.

Capital punishment for rape does not help the vulnerable

However, headline-grabbing cases did not cease: Just recently, a young veterinary doctor in Hyderabad was raped and killed, a girl in Unnao in UP met a similar fate.

After every horrific case of rape that becomes news, public outrage leads to a few amendments to the existing law. Either making the punishment more stringent or widening the ambit of what can be considered rape. In fact, the first major amendment to Section 375 of the IPC came after widespread protests against the Supreme Court overturning the Bombay High Court’s decision in a custodial rape case of an Adivasi woman leading to the acquittal of two police officers. And in 2018, it was the nationwide outcry over the gang-rape of an eight-year-old in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, that led to the Criminal Law Act being amended to make rape of a minor under 12 punishable with death penalty, and make sentences more stringent in a graded manner.

In 2013, consequent to the Justice Verma Committee report, death penalty had been introduced in case the rape survivor dies or is rendered near-dead. The naysayers were swept aside as public anger for retribution was high after the brutality of the gang-rape in a Delhi bus, in what came to be known as the Nirbhaya case. The accused were hanged not so long ago.

However, headline-grabbing cases did not cease: Just recently, a young veterinary doctor in Hyderabad was raped and killed, a girl in Unnao in UP met a similar fate. Now, the brutality witnessed in Hathras raises the same set of questions. Is death penalty a deterrent? Probably not. Women’s rights activists and scholars had consistently warned against it in 2013. Global data shows the threat of a death sentence doubly endangers the life of the rape victim, as the criminals develop a stake in obliterating ‘evidence’. Retributive capital punishment is no substitute for law and order, and it clearly does not protect the vulnerable. Without a mass sensitisation via education, a revisiting of the law and long-pending police reforms, there’s little hope.

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