Saturday, January 19, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
LAW ANIMATED WORLD available online in pdf format
OUR FOREIGN READERS CAN AVAIL ISSUES OF LAW ANIMATED WORLD ONLINE IN PDF FORMAT BY PAYING TO PAYPAL FOR EVERY ISSUE - RS. 5 DOLLARS ONLY. THOSE INTERESTED MAY CLICK THE BELOW URL:
https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/ gb.php?i=1196139&c=single&cl= 237434
https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/
Friday, January 11, 2013
Editorial, "Rape Law needs a change?", in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 31 December 2012, Vol. 8, Part 2, No. 24 issue.
RAPE
LAW NEEDS A CHANGE?
courtesy: Tarek Fatah courtesy: Mona Hassan courtesy: Mona Hassan
No doubt, the recent Delhi gang-rape and the eventual death of the
unfortunate victim - the bravely resisting paramedical student Amanat or
Nirbhaya - is quite tragic and totally condemnable. The fury of protests by the
people, mainly youths, that spontaneously broke out in Delhi, and spread to many
other places, is also understandable and commendable, and certainly the rape
laws need to be severe both in letter and in spirit - through prompt and proper
implementation, and the latter is all the more essential in our conditions. However,
the vociferous demands from many sections of protesters for prescribing death
penalty for the offence of rape and also the recent moves for introduction of
chemical castration for sexual offenders cannot be supported since it is well
known that all over the world human rights organizations and activists are
either totally opposed to, and demand abolition of, the death penalty itself,
or would require the same to be limited to the ‘rarest of rare’ cases. Also,
the precept and practice of chemical castration is being denounced by human
rights associations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch
etc. as improper and amounting to ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. The problem
of rape is endemic all over the world with South
Africa topping the list with about 120 rapes per lakh of
population, followed by Botswana
(92.9), Sweden (63.5), UK (28), Belgium
(27.9), USA (27.3), Norway (19.2), France (16), etc. with our country
standing at 1.8 per lakh of population. And in none of the countries with such
disturbing rates of rapes and other forms of sexual violence, these extreme
penalties are prescribed. Moreover, our rape law, Section 376 of the Indian
Penal Code, prescribes punishment up to life imprisonment for rape and more
stringent dealing for gang-rape, and for murder, death penalty can also be invoked
(S 302 IPC).
Of course, the law could be made more stringent in case of gang-rapes,
especially for those with deadly effects for surviving victims, but the talk of
killing the culprits in ‘encounters’ or by public hanging after summary trial
etc. is neither palatable nor seems equitable to any democratic ethos. Rather,
the strict and speedy implementation of the existing rape law appears to be the
more desirable option. §§§
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Editorial, "SPARE THE CHILD OR BEAR THE ROD!" in 15 December 2012 LAW ANIMATED WORLD
SPARE THE CHILD OR BEAR THE ROD!
seems to be the new axiom for the Norwegian
neo-barbarians who have unjustly detained and after a trial, which looks quite
unfair even by our Indian standards, sentenced our Indian Telugu couple
Chandrasekhar and Anupama to 18 months and 15 months imprisonment respectively
for an alleged offence of violence against their own child. It was the 17th
century English poet, Samuel Butler, who in his poem Hudibras, perhaps using a Biblical root, coined the saying ‘spare
the rod and spoil the child’, which has later been adopted by and often
attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United
States of America. Truly so, and
we have a similar axiom applicable to more variegated circumstances declaring ‘dandam dasagunam bhavet’ [the rod delivers many good results] that is also meant to work and be applied in the
course of child rearing. We are aware that some of our own intellectuals
recently disapproved of these two traditional axioms and the practices
indicated by them saying the times have changed and the concepts of human
rights and duties have transcended this constricted ancient thinking and now
domestic violence, especially violence against children, is to be seriously
deplored and so the Norwegians were perhaps more correct in this regard.
However, this distorted interpretation of the so-called ‘good’s of the
seemingly progressive thinking and law of the Norwegians, for that matter of the
‘developed’ West, overlooks the general moral degeneration in human and family
relations in those countries and systems and the rise of so many other vices
like drug-addiction, maniac acts of violence by spoilt children, promiscuous
and abhorrent sexual practices, child and woman trafficking and above all
racism, veiled or open, etc. and the rise of demonical terrorists like Anders
Breivik (more
fanatical and cruel than Kasab of 26/11 mayhem whom we hanged recently) and the so mild punishment of such dastardly
criminals. Also overlooked is the imperative need to accord the foreign
residents in any country due respect and enough freedom and facility to follow
their own cultural, traditional practices so long as they do not interfere with
the public peace and law and order. On both counts we people of the Orient seem
to fare better than those of the Occident – especially the Norwegians – who
fall so short of real ‘civilization’. §§§
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)







