80-year-old raped, court for redefining rape laws
A Delhi court on Tuesday wanted the legislature to redefine the offence of rape while sentencing a youth to ten years in jail for assaulting an 80-year-old woman last year.
"This case sounds a wake-up call for Indian legislators to step in and think about having a re-look at the definition of rape so as to specifically include the instances of digital rape/male rape and make the offence gender neutral or to formulate a separate exhaustive legislation covering all categories of cases of sexual assault similar to legislations abroad," said Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau.
The court, which convicted the youth for committing the offence of unnatural sex, termed the assault of the destitute old woman as an incident covered in the category of "digital rape" and sought recasting of laws to include such incidents.
Such offences be made "gender neutral", it said while holding 19-year-old Pahlad guilty of abduction, forcing the woman into an illicit intercourse against the order of the nature, attempt to murder and digital rape.
Terming the case as an "eye opener", the court said it was time for the legislature to take a serious note of the extent of depravation which exists in Indian urban society, victims of which are usually children and senior citizens being easy targets.
The judgement came in a case of "digital rape" of an old woman by Pahlad on the intervening night of May 19-20 last year when she was sleeping in a shed in a park at Tri Nagar here.
The convict asked the victim to accompany him. On being refused, he forcibly took her to bushes in a nearby park and sexually assaulted her with a wooden stick.
