Dear colleagues,
I hope you receive this communication despite individuals overseeing the
dirty tricks department of the Internet some of whom are known to me who
prevent communications from being sent or received !
The Army has a board of inquiry to deal with its officers followed by a
Court Martial which is far more efficient than the civilian court and from
which affected parties after exhausting institutional remedies can move the
High Court or the Supreme Court as and by way of a Writ .
The proposal to make the Commanding Officers in all cases responsible for
individual acts of rape, whether or not he has acquiesced in the offence or
neglected to take action , is not justified . This is warranted only in cases
of gang rape or mass rape by units , where a series of acts can be attributed
to overall indiscipline and criminality , in which case of course
responsibility must be affixed .
As you are aware in the Petition against the present Army Chief in view of
the fact that the Brigade he had commanded in the Congo had been indicted by
the UN authorities for several cases sexual misconduct , the view of the
Supreme Court was not to interfere with the appointment. Though this was a case
not of an individual act of misconduct of an officer or a Jawan but several
cases exposing a course of conduct directly reflected on the overall command.
I hope the Committee has dealt with the gang rapes on the Tribal women in
Chhattisgarh among other regions of the country by the para military and the
police , the class rapes on Dalit women and on women of the minorities in
the communal onslaughts being waged across the country.
With the declining demographic ratio of women our society faces grim days
ahead and the balance has to shift in favour of women in particular of the
socially and economically weaker sections and middle income groups , till we
can say we have equalized the genders , however it will be necessary to provide
for penalty for false complaints .
Populism is never the answer , the amendments must be carefully considered and
since the IPC provides for the death penalty in case of murder , in the
eventuality of murder taking place during the course of rape or the injuries
being sufficient to result in death ,or the age of the victim being such that
in the normal course death could be caused , we cannot shy away from using the
death penalty which is already in the IPC for murder, in a brutalized society
where physical , political and financial power dominate and women of the
poorer classes and middle income groups have no voice .The precaution of the "
rarest of rare " cases though a cautious principle , is leading to lowering of
sentences in very brutal crimes with no application of mind on sentencing .
The assurance that the death penalty will not be used including in cases of
political assassination , the result of brutal conspiracies has resulted in a
situation where society is assuring the criminalized in society and in the
political and financial world , that it is safe to commit the most brutal
crimes and there will be no death penalty for those who perpetrate the act or
for the conspirators behind the act .
I have not heard those against the death penalty in India and elsewhere
being equally shrill about the collective death sentences by bombing and other
weapons including Drone warfare being perpetrated by Imperialists in countries
which are being invaded and occupied where thousands and millions have been
killed .
There is a jurisprudence surrounding punishment and penalties , that must be
understood in the context of the society which we are living in, and not
applied in the abstract . Our society despite its hypocrisy of referring to
culture and civilization is very brutal , though of course not in the same
way as the ruling classes and soldiers of societies which have colonized and
occupied whole continents and continue to extract surpluses by bombing
operations or appointing their own nominees in governments and political
parties in Asia , Africa and Latin America apart from having settled their own
populations in North America , Australia and South America at the cost of the
life and development of the Indigenous people .
Niloufer Bhagwat
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