A day after President Ram Nath Kovind gave his nod to an ordinance on death penalty for rapists who attack children, a citizen survey shows that 76 per cent of the people agree with it.

According to the survey conducted by LocalCircles, 18 per cent voted for life imprisonment without parole for convicted rapists while three per cent said it should be a seven-year jail term (which is the current law).

To catch the citizens’ pulse on the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, LocalCircles conducted six nation-wide polls which received more than 40,000 votes.

In the second poll, 89 per cent agreed that they want their states to pass a law that awards death penalty within six months. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh have also passed a law that awards death penalty for child rape.

In another poll, which was about engaging more women officers to register cases of sexual assault, it was found that 78 per cent citizens were in support of every district level police station to have at least one woman officer.

For the fourth poll, on maximum time taken by the police to file a charge sheet in cases of child rape, only 28 per cent said it should be done within 30 days, while 25 per cent said 45 days.

In the fifth poll, it was found that 65 per cent want POCSO judges to only handle cases which are related to child sexual abuse.

The final poll on the maximum time taken for justice in cases of child rape under POCSO act, 85 per cent citizens said it should be within six months.

The family of a Latvian female tourist whose body was found near Kovalam in Kerala on Monday demanded a fair probe into her death which they claimed was not a suicide.

The body of Liga Skromane, 33, who went missing last month from here, was found in a highly decomposed state on Friday. Her sister Ilzie identified the body.

Ilzie told the media: “I want justice for my sister. We are happy that a special team of police has been appointed to probe the case. We want to know what happened to her.”

Andrew, Liga’s partner, thanked the people of Kerala for their love and support. “The police here should now take this seriously as it should never happen to anyone.

“What we want to ask of the people of the locality where the body was found is to come forward and tell us if they saw anything. This was no suicide,” he said.

On Monday, the Kerala government announced ex-gratia payment of Rs 5 lakh to the victim’s family.

Kerala Police chief Loknath Behra said the probe had now become a matter of challenge.

“A foreigner has died in our state and we will ensure that the case is solved,” he said.

Liga and Ilzie came to Kerala for ayurvedic treatment at a facility on the outskirts of Trivandrum.

She went missing on March 14 and was last reported to have taken an auto-rickshaw ride to Kovalam. She was not carrying a passport or mobile phone with her.

(Ians)

A man sleeping here on footpath has been crushed to death by a car driven by an engineering student, police said.

The incident occurred in Kushaiguda area when the 19-year-old returning after a late night party along with her three friends, lost control of the car. She was allegedly in an inebriated state, according to the police.

The car crossed the road divider and hit the footpath on the other side of the road.

K. Ashok (30), who used to work as a cobbler was sleeping on the footpath. He sustained critical injuries. He was rushed to the government-run Gandhi Hospital, where he succumbed.

The incident occurred after midnight in the DAE Colony here. The four students belong to a private engineering college.

People, who gathered at the spot, alleged that the police were trying to shield the students, as the girl who was driving the Skoda car is daughter of a police officer.

Police said they have registered a case and conducting further investigations. The CCTV footage in the area was being scanned.

(IANS)

A Class 6 girl student has been allegedly kidnapped and raped for two days by her relative in Odisha’s Kalahandi district, police said on Friday.

Police have arrested the accused, identified as Munna Naik, 30, after the family members of the victim lodged a complaint on Thursday night.

As per the FIR, the minor girl had gone to her uncle’s house at Dumerapadar village on April 17 to attend a family function.

While returning, she was abducted by Naik and taken to his house, where he kept the girl for two days and allegedly raped her.

Naik later abandoned the girl on the roadside on Thursday evening.

The girl narrated the ordeal before her family members following which a complaint was lodged with the police.

“We have registered a case following the complaint of the family members. Further investigation is on,” said Bianchi Prasad Dehuri, Bhawanipatna Sub-Divisional Police Officer.

The brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl from a Muslim minority group is not just about gender violence.

The gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua district of Indian-administered Kashmir is a chilling reminder of how sexual assault is used as a tool to instil fear among those belonging to the minority communities in India.

There have been many Indians, especially on social media platforms, who have repeatedly claimed that one must look at this rape as a gender violence crime. But to turn a blind eye to the events that took place before and after her murder and to her belonging to the Bakarwal nomadic minority would be grossly unfair.

The official investigation has already shown that there is a hate crime element to the rape and murder – in other words, the victim being attacked by her murderers had a lot to do with her being a Muslim Bakarwal.
In the course of investigation, it transpired that [one of the accused] was against the settlement of Bakarwals in Rasana Kootah, and Dhamyal area, and always kept on motivating the members of his community of the area not to provide land for grazing or any other kind of assistance…

[Two of the accused] were also against the settlement of Bakarwals in Rasana, Kootah and Dhamyal area who had already discussed this issue […] to Chalk out a strategy for dislodging the Bakarwals from the area. They were blaming the Bakarwals on one pretext or the other and used to threaten them…

This apart during investigation it transpired that a particular community had a general impression that the Bakarwals indulge in cow slaughter and drug trafficking and that their children were turning into drug addicts…

Thus during investigation it has become abundantly clear that the accused had a reason to act against the Bakarwal Community and hence the conspiracy ultimately resulting into the gruesome rape and brutal murder …”

One could easily see in these lines elements of the demonising stereotypes that have provoked attacks on minorities across India in recent years. In 2017 alone, accusations of cow slaughter (forbidden in most Indian states) against minority communities resulted in dozens of mob lynching and 11 deaths.

Furthermore, tensions between the Hindu majority and minorities have also resulted in communal violence in the past in which women and girls have been specifically targeted, as was the case in Gujarat in 2002 and Uttar Pradesh in 2013.

In this sense, it is difficult to see the sexual assault and murder in Kathua only in the framework of gender violence. Unfortunately, we live at a time when rape has become a political tool to instil fear among minority groups in India.

Support for the suspect rapists
Before this brutal case made to national and international news, the Bakarwal community struggled with pressure from members of the Hindu majority not to make noise about it. The family and their lawyer were repeatedly threatened not to speak out; some members of the community left early for the mountains. Her parents were forced to take her brutalised body to another village to bury because baton-wielding locals did not allow them to lay her to rest in the place where she used to live.

But even more disturbingly, after the suspects in the case were arrested, locals organised protests in their support. On February 15, thousands joined the demonstrations in Kathua to demand the release of special police officer Deepak Khajuria – one of the accused.

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After girl’s rape and killing, fear engulfs Muslim nomads
The march was organised by the newly created right-wing Hindu Ekta Manch (Hindu Solidarity Platform, based in Jammu) and was backed and attended by officials from the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including two ministers in the state government.

After much outrage, the ministers submitted their resignations, but one cannot but wonder why they were not expelled by the party immediately for being part of the protests. Similarly, Congress Party member Ghagwal Vijay Tagotra, who was also in the front line of the protest, was suspended but not expelled from the party.

It took national public outrage and the release of gruesome details of the violence unleashed on an 8-year-old girl in temple premises for the prime minister to come out and issue a general statement four months after the murder. This says a lot about how seriously a crime committed against a Muslim girl belonging to a nomadic community in a state like Jammu and Kashmir is treated.

But it hasn’t only been Kathua locals and politicians who have reacted disgracefully to the brutal murder.

Public figures like Indian feminist and academic, Madhu Kishwar have gone as far as claiming that the crime was committed by “jehadi [sic] Rohingya” refugees.

Support for the Bakarwal community from tribal organisations has also been conspicuously absent.

“The inherent bias against the Muslim minority community also displays itself in the fact that there have not been any joint statements made by de-notified/nomadic tribal organisations across the country condemning the incident faced by the nomadic family let alone standing in solidarity with them,” told me one leader of an alliance of denotified tribes, who did not wish to be named.

As protests around the country take place to demand justice for the eight-year-old victim, we must ponder two points.

One, in the December 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case, the family of the victim did not have to beg and plea for their safety and security; there were no protests in support of the six suspects and rightly so.

Two, not one of those named as the suspects in the gang rape of seven Muslim women during the Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh in 2013 are behind bars today. Society and media both forgot the women soon after they received a small amount of compensation as rape survivors.

With this in mind, we should continue to demand not only that justice is served for the Kathua victim and her family, but also that it is seen as a hate crime.

We need to acknowledge that there is a problem with both gender and communal violence in our country.

Aljazeera

Air India has ordered a probe into the complaints that one of its senior pilots intimedate to hit his co-pilots with ‘crash axe’ at least on two flights, the sources said.

While ordering probe, India’s national carrier also directed the senior pilot not to perform his duties as an instructor till further orders.

His ‘trainership,’ however, was restored last week.

In the first incident, the pilot, who is a trainer, allegedly intimedate the use of crash axe in the presence of a safety pilot doing the route check.

According to sources, the trainer pilot who was in the cockpit of Air Indian flight AI 709 from Kolkata to Dimapur on January 18, 2018, allegedly intimedated to use the axe against the co-pilot who was doing his route check.

On January 26, 2018, the senior commander allegedly misbehaved again against his co-pilot and doled out the same threat to his trainee pilot during a Mumbai-Kolkata flight, forcing the trainee pilot to file a complaint against him, sources said.

Sources said the probe is still on and the instructor has already submitted his response on the incident.

A woman was brutally beaten to death in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district for allegedly objecting to her daughter’s relationship with a woman teacher. Rashmi Rana, 21, and her teacher Nisha Gautama attacked the victim with an iron rod, leading to severe head injuries.
The duo has been arrested from Ghaziabad Railway Station and after being interrogated the girl has confessed to the crime of killing her mother.

Rashmi Rana, resident of Delhi’s Kavi Nagar, and her partner Nisha Gautama attacked the woman with an iron rod leading to severe head injuries.

The police also said Rashmi Rana had been living with her partner for a while.

“But she (Rashmi) did not want to leave her teacher. So in a fit of anger, she hit her due to which she (mother) died,” Superintendent of Police Akash Tomar said.

The police also confirmed that Pushpa Devi’s husband was not at home when the incident took place.

After confessing to the crime, Rashmi Rana told the police that her mother frequently tortured her due to her relationship.

Both Rashmi and her partner Nisha have been sent to jail.

The girl’s father Satish Kumar had filed FIR (First Information Report) at Kavi Nagar police station on March 9 against his daughter and the teacher. He had accused them of battering his wife, Pushpa Devi, with an iron rod which later caused her death.

Two online fraudsters who were duping wealthy businessmen on the pretext of offering them a business partnership in international companies were arrested by the city cyber crime police.
The accused – Aakash V. Goni (39) a resident of Mira Road, Mumbai and his associate Surendra Rangad Puran (42) of Jogeshwari, Mumbai – posed as foreigners and top executives of veterinary healthcare companies in the US and Canada to trap the businessmen.
The city cyber crime police got involved after a city-based businessman lodged a complaint, saying Aakash and Surendra cheated him in the name of the partnership and swindled him of Rs 30 lakh in September last year.

After registering the complaint, the police managed to trace and arrest the accused after seven months of investigation. The police have recovered a car and four mobile phones worth Rs 3 lakh from them.

The businessman then contacted the accused and explained to them about the deal, to which the accused told him to go ahead. He then met the accused who had offered the chemical and struck a deal for Rs 30 lakh. The accused asked the businessman to deposit the amount into a bank account after which he said the consignment would be dispatched.

But once the businessman deposited the amount, the mobile phone of the accused was switched off. That was when the businessman realised that he was being swindled and filed a complaint with the cyber crime police.

The call detail records and bank account details of the accused helped the police trace them in Mumbai. Based on their inputs, their gang members – Chethan Dharma (29) from Rourkela in Odisha, Shamim Ahmed (36) from Devariya district in UP, Tubudi Mukadi Jean (25), a Congo national, who was staying in the city on a student visa, and his associate Philip Opeyemi (30) from Nigeria, who was staying in Kalyan Nagar on a student visa, were also arrested.

The police said that the accused are part of an online racket and have several bank accounts which they use to transfer money from one account to another. The accused Aakash’s father was a Kannada film director and producer, the investigation revealed. The police now suspect that the accused might have duped many more such gullible businessmen using similar tactics.

A 16-year-old girl approached the police alleging that her parents tried to force her into changing her statement in favour of two men accused of raping her in outer Delhi’s Aman Vihar area.

The girl approached the police on April 10 with help from her neighbor, along with Rs 5 lakh that her parents her parents had accepted as advance, following which a case was registered.
The girl claimed that her parents initially tried to convince her to change her statement but when she refused to listen to them, they started beating her up.
She returned after a week and told police that she was held captive by two men who raped her. The two men were arrested.
and also girl’s parents were booked under the Juvenile Justice Act and for criminal intimidation, threatening someone to give false evidence and criminal conspiracy.
Her mother was arrested but her father is on the run.

The girl has been handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), which sent her to a children’s home.