India No 2 After Pakistan in Rapes is Thinking of May be Correcting This

A commission set up to suggest reforms to India's rape laws after last month's gang rape of a student has called for faster trials.

India is been called the world’s largest democracy. When in fact this is the world’s largest men's club. Men control everything including what women are allowed to run and win and once they are place as Prime Minister if they don’t follow the established road then they don’t loose an election, they get shot. Bhutto in Pakistan and in my time I can remember one in India.  If in the span of 20 years two get elected and one gets killed, that’s a ratio of half. Because women are given the task to take care of her family and family being her parents and his parents plus the off spring, which would be as many as he can make, particularly if she starts having girls instead of boys. Women are packed with so much that who has the time to get tough and push to get their spot at the table of politics.

Until the women realized that everything is connected in any sort of politics, if they don’t give themselves a priority to get involved in politics then rape, murder or what ever the men wants that is what happens. In India and Pakistan they sometimes they arrest the perpetrators but that is where the whole system stops.  No punishment, no matter how serious the offense.

This country was similar. No vote for women, the women takes care of the house and their men. This is tradition dictated by religion. Religions in which women had no say, so they get no rights. At least in this country (US) we had an influx from many countries many types of religions and many people coming here running away from religion and oppressive governments, they tend and tended to be more militant. As a result, even though it was not a long time ago, but they got the vote, they put pressure in the supreme court to give them wade and with it control of their own bodies, which before Wade they didn’t even have that.

I wanted to introduced the news coming to from India today to give a background so people can understand what is going on there. Recently there have been high profile cases but only because the media is made it that way. These crimes have been going on since the nation was formed.

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 The panel, led by former chief justice JS Verma, also called for longer sentences but not the death penalty.

India's law minister said the report would get "government attention" soon.

The brutal assault on the 23-year-old student in Delhi in December shocked India and sparked a debate about the treatment of women.

Justice Verma said his three-member commission had received 80,000 responses from India and abroad on how to reform rape laws.

Among the recommendations of the report, submitted to the home ministry on Wednesday, were

• broadening of the definition of what constituted sexual assault
• cases to be tried in specially designated courts, preferably by women judges
• quicker trials and faster processing of appeals in cases of crimes against women
• more accountability for the police
• better implementation of laws and the need for a change in the mindset of law-enforcers
• strong action against those found guilty of trafficking and against security forces convicted of sexual assault in conflict zones.
• uniform national protocol for the treatment and medical examination of rape survivors

The panel also recommended that those found guilty of rape leading to death spend the rest of their life in prison, but it stopped short of calling for the death penalty, something which many in India had pushed for, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reports from Delhi.

"What is needed to enforce laws is the sensitivity on the part of those who implement it," he told a news conference after submitting the report to the home ministry in Delhi.

"The state's role is not just punishing criminals but also to prevent crimes against women," he said.

Justice Verma said the authorities had failed in their duties to the public.

He said that despite the huge number of responses to the commission's request for ideas, not a single Indian state police chief had sent recommendations.

The head of the panel also praised young people for going into the streets to protest about the status quo.

"Youth has taught us what we, the older generation, were not aware of. I was struck by the peaceful manner in which the protests were carried out... the youth rose to the occasion," he said.

'Institutional bias'

Justice Leila Seth, another member of the commission, said police "don't take complaints of rape victims seriously".

"There is institutional bias against the weaker sections of society," she said.

The Verma committee also looked at marital rapes and physical, sexual and psychological violence in the family.

Justice Verma said he hoped that the report would be taken seriously by the government.

The student raped in December, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked after boarding a bus in south Delhi with a male friend.

Police said the assailants beat both of them, and then raped the woman. She suffered massive internal injuries and died nearly two weeks later.

The incident led to nationwide protests against the treatment of women in India. Campaigners called for tougher rape laws and reforms to the police, who have been accused of often failing to file charges against attackers.

Earlier this week, the trial of five men held for the crime began at a specially convened fast-track court.

If convicted, the men could face the death penalty. A sixth suspect, who is thought to be 17, is expected to be tried by a juvenile court.

The government has said it will bring in stronger sexual assault laws and has established several committees to recommend changes.

It has also promised to fast-track future rape cases. Legal proceedings in India sometimes involve years of delays.

There are believed to be about 95,000 rape cases pending nationwide, according to Ranjana Kumari, a women's activist.

News out of BBC