'We should have tougher anti-rape laws': Ramya

Congress candidate and Kannada actress Ramya, who today won the Mandya Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka, said that there should be tougher anti-rape laws in the country.

"I think we should have tougher anti-rape laws and I think there should be more security for women and I condemn any form of...rape, molestation anything that is towards children or women," Ramya told media here, when asked about the alleged gangrape of a photojournalist in Mumbai.

"I think education is very important and everybody has to take the law very seriously in this country. And I think we will work towards that," she added.

The Congress has wrested both the Mandya and Bangalore rural Parliamentary seats in Karnataka from JDS in the bypolls.

Ramya won from Mandya and senior Congress MLA DK Shiva Kumar's brother DK Suresh Kumar from Bangalore Rural. Both the seats were held by the JD (S) with Bangalore Rural won by former CM H D Kumaraswamy in 2009.

On her electoral debut, Ramya defeated JD(S) CS Puttaraju by a margin of 47,000 plus votes. Suresh Kumar trounced Kumaraswamy's wife Anitha by over a lakh votes.

The bypolls was necessitated, as seats held by Cheluvarayaswamy and H D Kumaraswamy from JD(S) were vacated after they won the recently held Assembly elections.