Ensure certainty not severity of punishment: woman rights activists on hanging of convicts

Some women's rights activists have asserted that hanging of the Nirbhaya convicts is not a solution to tackle sexual crimes and demanded certainty not just severity of punishment in such cases.

Women rights body All India Progressive Women's Association said since the Nirbhaya case, the anti-rape law has been changed to an extent but its implementation remains lax and most of the recommendations are yet to be realised in practice.

"The fact is that in the vast majority of rape cases, the perpetrators still enjoy absolute impunity because the victims are failed at every step - by the police, by the judiciary, and by an overwhelming climate of patriarchal victim blaming. The exceptional, highly publicised executions of rape convicts in a rare case, far from deterring rape, actually deters our society and our government from confronting and taking responsibility for rape culture," the AIPWA said in a statement.

"An execution falsely reassures us that rape is a 'rarest of the rare' act committed by strangers, beasts. In fact, rapists are usually not strangers, but men we know and admire - and rape is a product of our patriarchal society, not an isolated rare instance," according to the statement issued by Rati Rao, President, AIPWA, Meena Tiwari, General Secretary, AIPWA and Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, AIPWA