Call for systemic reforms to tackle violence against women

Human rights bodies and women panels today called for systemic reforms to tackle violence against women, even as they differed on the need to have the provision of death penalty in the statute books.
Amnesty International-India welcomed the fact that the December 16 gangrape and murder of a physiotherapy student received adequate attention from authorities and ended in convictions and called for the implementation of recommendations made by the Justice Verma Committee.
The committee was constituted after the horrific gangrape case to recommend amendments to the Criminal Law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women.

"But the attention that authorities have given to this case must also extend to the many other pending cases of sexual violence across India," Amnesty India's senior campaigner Gopika Bashi said.
The human rights body opposes the death penalty on principle, terming it as the "ultimate violation" of the right to life.
Bashi said there was a need for police training and reform, preventive measures and changing the way reports of sexual violence were registered and investigated.

"These measures will take effort and time, but will be more effective in the long run in making India safer for women," she said.

Lauding the verdict upholding the death sentence given to the four convicts in the case, chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Swati Maliwal said it would provide confidence to rape survivors seeking justice.
"This is not the fight if just one Nirbhaya, it is the fight of all Nirbhayas and we are glad that the Supreme court has given strength to all those victims. We salute the spirit of her parents who not only fought for their daughter's justice but also triggered a change in the Juvenile Justice act," she said.
As per the amended legislation, juveniles aged 16 years and above can now be tried under laws for adults for heinous crimes.

The 23-year-old woman was gangraped on a wintry night of December 16, 2012 and brutalised, an act that had numbed an entire nation and brought the young to the streets, lending her the moniker of 'Nirbhaya', the fearless.
Days after the incident in 2012, the National Human Rights Commission had taken suo motu cognisance of the case and made certain recommendations to improve the law and order the capital city, a senior NHRC official said.
"The incident has raised the issue of declining public confidence in the law and order machinery in the city, especially, in its capacity to ensure safety of women as a number of such incidents have been reported in the national capital in the recent past," the NHRC had then said.

The Commission had issued notices to the then Union Home Secretary and the then Delhi Police Commissioner and asked them to submit their reports within two weeks.