Indian govt vows zero tolerance
India's new government has promised "zero tolerance" for violence against women, amid widespread public anger following the recent gang-rape and lynching of two teenage girls.
President Pranab Mukherjee made the pledge in a speech to parliament that laid out the rightwing government's agenda following a landslide election victory for the Bharatiya Janata party, led by Narendra Modi, last month.
Mukherjee also announced a range of other measures to tackle the recent surge of sexual violence against women in India including reforms of the country's slow, corrupt and inefficient criminal justice system.
"The government will have a policy of zero tolerance for violence against women, and will strengthen the criminal justice system for its effective implementation," the president told a joint sitting of parliament.
The attack last month on the two low-caste girls, aged 12 and 14, in a village in a poor region of northern Uttar Pradesh, was the latest in a series of such incidents that have shocked many Indians and badly damaged the image of the country overseas.
In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapist was gang-raped on a bus on busy roads in Delhi, and later died of her injuries. Tens of thousands took to the streets demanding change after that attack, which prompted widespread calls for judicial and policing reform as well as an unprecedented debate on the causes of the surge in such crimes.
Ranjana Kumari, a well-known campaigner and analyst, said politicians themselves needed to set an example. In the last week, two senior officials from the BJP have prompted outrage with ill-considered comments on sexual violence. One, home minister in the central Chhattisgarh state, said that "no one commits rape deliberately", while his counterpart in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh state said rape was "sometimes right, sometimes wrong".
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