India Passes Sweeping Bill on Crimes Against Women

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Demonstrators shouting slogans in the wake of the Dec. 16 gang rape of a woman, at the India Gate, in New Delhi, in this Dec. 27, 2012 photo.

NEW DELHI

Less than three months after a Delhi woman who was gang raped on a moving bus died from her injuries, India’s Parliament passed a comprehensive bill that imposes stronger penalties on men who attack women and criminalizes offenses like stalking and voyeurism.

The bill quickly cleared the upper house, or Rajya Sahba, of Parliament on Thursday, after being debated for seven hours in the lower house on Tuesday before passing. President Pranab Mukherjee is expected to sign it into law shortly.

“I think this is an important moment,” said Vrinda Grover, a women’s rights activist and lawyer. “We have taken quite a few steps forward.”

The Dec. 16 gang rape and assault of a physiotherapy student, and her subsequent death, sparked widespread and sometimes violent protests in India.

Citizens, activists and many politicians demanded the government do more to protect women and impose harsher sentences on the men who molest them. Reported rapes in India have risen in recent years, and northern India has witnessed a series of highly publicized gang rapes.

The bill, which amends India’s criminal laws, is intended to deter and punish sexual offenders, including men who stalk and harass women, and to create a more responsive police and judicial system, which is widely criticized as being insensitive when dealing with crimes against women.

It expands the definition of rape, substantially increases the punishment for sex crimes like gang rape, introduces the death penalty for repeat offenders and criminalizes activities like disrobing and voyeurism.

India’s democracy has often been faulted for being so unruly and its Parliament so dysfunctional that fundamental, vital development issues, like malnutrition and education, are inadequately addressed.

The fact that the bill passed both houses of Parliament even as they adjourned unexpectedly several times this week, after a key ally of the governing Congress Party abandoned it, is a sign that the demands of thousands of protesters were heard, activists said.

“It is good that India still responds as a democracy when there is pressure from citizens,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the director of Human Rights Watch in South Asia, said. “The terrible attack in Delhi, and the protests that followed, ensured that both the opposition and the government cooperated in ensuring that this law was enacted.”

India’s cabinet ministers were quick to praise the bill’s passage. “The bill is significant as it aims to protect mothers and sisters of this country,” said India’s minister of home affairs, Sushil Kumar Shinde, on Thursday in the Rajya Sabha, according to the Press Trust of India. “Over years, such a stringent law has not been made,” he said.

Although opposition politicians were unsatisfied. Nirmala Sitharaman, the national spokeswoman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the leading opposition party, said the government could have done more with this bill. “I wish the discussion around the bill would have been more substantive in both the houses,” she said. “This is a step forward, but the government could have done more homework to bring about a stronger legislation.”

In crafting the bill, the government included many of the recommendations of a report submitted in January by a panel headed by former Chief Justice J.S. Verma, which suggested far-reaching changes in the legal and justice system.

The three-member panel consulted hundreds of activists, laws of other countries and literature on criminal psychology to recommend changes that would help fight discrimination against women.
Among the report’s recommendations adopted by government were the creation of stalking, voyeurism and disrobing as separate offenses, provisions to punish police officers who failed to register complaints of sexual offenses and a broadening of the definition of rape to include the insertion of an object or any other body part into a woman’s vagina, urethra or anus.

The law went against the report’s suggestions by adopting the death penalty in some rape cases and raising the age of consent for sex to 18.

Many activists are encouraged by the bill, but say public debate and reforms for gender equality must continue. “The spectrum of change India requires is much, much broader than amendments to the criminal laws,” said Ms. Grover, the lawyer. “We need to really focus on enforcement and implementation.”

Others said the bill was a disappointment. Sandhya Valluripally, president of the Progressive Organization of Women, said that women’s organizations had been demanding for years a bill that offers complete protection for women from sexual harassment. She said she thought the bill that was passed Thursday has fallen short of that.

Many of the Verma committee recommendations were missing in the bill, she noted.

“There are so many recommendations that were rejected by the government of India,” she said, saying that her group is against the death penalty and wanted child trafficking to be considered rape.

She also was critical of the discussions that took place in Parliament on the bill. “The discussions were derogatory to women,” she said.

Sruthi Gottipati and Pamposh Raina contributed reporting from New Delhi.