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That Indian Gang Ra...
 

[Closed] That Indian Gang Rape Case - Death Penalties Handed Down

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So we should blame contemporary violence against women on a man who died over 60 years ago?

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. 🙄


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:50 am
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I understand what glupton is saying and agree with it. That doesn't stop me thinking that the death penalty is the most fitting sentence for them.

I don't think India care too much about human rights for law abiding citizens let alone scum like this. I think their justice department will probably sleep soundly with this decision.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:51 am
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Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

Then tell me what you did mean!


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:51 am
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Romanticising nature much?

Anthropomorphising nature much?


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:52 am
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Then tell me what you did mean!

I meant that a man preaching "an eye for an eye makes the world blind" in one breath and then possibly (not sure of the sources) believing that "Indian women who were raped lost their value as human beings." and "arguing that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour." Is maybe not the best role model for a civilised (and equal) society that one first assumes. Therefore the irony is not so ironic after all.

Does that make sense?

PS - Sorry for being glib.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:56 am
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Brakes

I'm prepared to let this clear contravention of law slide. just this once.

That's also against the Rule of Law, it's there so laws can't be changed/made up as we go along.

You can't just pick and choose, that's the whole point.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:57 am
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no shit Sherlock


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:58 am
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Anthropomorphising nature much?

Not really, no.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 11:58 am
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Pretty sure murder has been punishable by death in India for a long, long time. I think OP has got the wrong end of the stick here.

Possibly, and I hope so.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:01 pm
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Although the offence at the time may have been rape, it looks pretty clear to me that what was done with the iron bar led to her death. So the offence is murder at most manslaughter at least as even the most uneducated know that sticking iron bars where the sun don't shine is bad for your health. Seems to me that when truly shocking incidents occur that we as a society rather not look at the elephant in the room and will react by either clearing the room by state sponsored murder or look the other way and make sure that the crockery is all adjusted and in line in an OCD manner by insisting that these monsters are treated in the most civilised way possible and afford them every right possible.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:03 pm
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Its difficult to read the accounts of what happened and not feel a deep down visceral disgust at what these men did.

The disgust quickly gives way to anger and the need for retribution. This is a totally understandable emotional response.

But laws should not be based upon emotion.

Sentencing these men to death doesn't change the fact that the poor woman is dead, nor does it go very far towards addressing the wider issues with violence towards women in Indian society or the traditional caste system as a whole.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:14 pm
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They bit that I don't like is that when they committed their offences their crime was not punishable by death. Surely their punishment should only be the maximum allowed at the time they committed the offence

That's not correct—murder is punishable by death under the Penal Code (s 302); also the imposition of a retrospective criminal penalty would be unconstitutional (see art 20(1): 'No person shall ... be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have been inflicted under the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence ...')


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:17 pm
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I meant that a man preaching "an eye for an eye makes the world blind" in one breath and then possibly (not sure of the sources) believing that "Indian women who were raped lost their value as human beings." and "arguing that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour." Is maybe not the best role model for a civilised (and equal) society that one first assumes. Therefore the irony is not so ironic after all.

Does that make sense?

PS - Sorry for being glib.

Thanks. I'm not sure it's not ironic: my point was simply that the state - which has just sanctioned killing - was founded by someone who spent his life opposing vengeance. That Ghandi may well have been flawed, repressed and held misogynistic views is unpleasant indeed, but not altogether surprising for a man of his time.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:22 pm
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I'm hard pressed to find anything in this judgement that is unacceptable to me on an emotional level, but I'm also not a great believer in the death penalty on an intellectual level. However, I do wonder if a life time in solitary in an Indian Jail, with the constant threat of a violent unsanctioned death hanging over them is any more or less abhorrent than a quick exit.

Difficult all round IMHO.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:30 pm
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Patriot, the 17 y/o was the worst of the lot of them

Maximum-sentence syndrome then.

He'll suffer in jail I would have thought *shudders* maybe the deathers got off lightly...


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:35 pm
 mt
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Why not ask her family what they'd like for a punishment?


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:41 pm
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Killing people is wrong. Why because human life is important.

So we demonstrate how wrong killing people is....by killing them. Hmmmm.

I disagree with the death penalty. I think it's an affront to our humanity to plan and carry out an execution. Regardless of what that person done. How behaving like animals deters others from behaving like animals is beyond me. And the relative subjectivity justifies people killing others in the name of God/Allah whoever (after all insulting a superior deity must be worse, right?).

They did something unconscionable. Unforgivable. Disgusting. Killing them doesn't make it better. Adding another inhuman act to the heap just makes us a little dirtier.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:43 pm
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Dead easy.
Its none our business.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:46 pm
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Thanks. I'm not sure it's not ironic: my point was simply that the state - which has just sanctioned killing - was founded by someone who spent his life opposing vengeance. That Ghandi may well have been flawed, repressed and held misogynistic views is unpleasant indeed, but not altogether surprising for a man of his time.

Well, when you put it like that... ...Point conceded.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:48 pm
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Not really, no.

No? Pretty sure rape is a purely human construct. Not that forced sex doesn't occur in animals but I struggle to apply the same moral dimension to their behaviour compared to ours.

Each to their own though.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 12:50 pm
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Killing people is wrong. Why because human life is important.

why is human life important - is this some religious reasoning or something. If so then

"And a man who inflicts an injury upon his fellow man just as he did, so shall be done to him [namely,] fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he inflicted an injury upon a person, so shall it be inflicted upon him."

Death is fair enough for them considering their crimes.

What if they had raped your sister like that - how would you feel then?


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:16 pm
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Bad cases, bad laws


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:17 pm
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What if...

Hypotheticals are useless in debates such as these.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:19 pm
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What if they had raped your sister like that - how would you feel then?

Yes I'd want them dead, which is generally why victims families don't decide the sentence and we have a judicial system instead.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:22 pm
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What if they had raped your sister like that - how would you feel then?

If it was your sister I'd still want them dead.

I used to have an idealized view that human life is special and should never be taken but now I just think too many people treat others like sh!t so lets get rid of them.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:26 pm
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why is human life important

It's just this crazy whacked out notion that some of us have.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:26 pm
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It was stated on the radio that 1 in 4 men in 6 Asian countries admitted to raping someone during their lifetime. Admittedly none of them were India but it is the same region. My mind was slightly blown by this.

[url= http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-09/13/content_16967946.htm ]Article.[/url]

In regards to the OP, thou shalt not kill. No ifs, no buts. Anything less is barbaric. Changing the law so you can execute people speaks volumes about the quality of their justice system and will no doubt come back to haunt them in the future. I reckon it is a big mistake. They should chuck them in the clink and let the other prisoners do the job for them.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:42 pm
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They should chuck them in the clink and let the other prisoners do the job for them.

Provide weapons or just turn a blind eye? Actually a Thunderdome approach might be quite good, get it on pay per view for some well needed revenue raising.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:45 pm
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Provide weapons or just turn a blind eye?

Neither. It is the duty of the authorities to protect those in their custody. It was a flippant remark but it is far more satisfactory to have an individual break the law than it is for the law to be changed on the whims of victims.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 1:57 pm
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it is my view that with an act as despicable as that they have lost the right to any existence in society.

The only reason to let them live is if they were so intellectually challenged to not realize that they were committing a gross crime against society, let alone the victim.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 2:35 pm
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Having a bit of a conversation about this in the office and I one of my colleagues came up with a bit of a blinder that left me a bit stumped.

I was arguing that we should not be able to apply a new law to an old crime as that undermines the rule of law and people should be punished according to the law at the time that the offence was committed.

He then asked if we should be executing people who were proved to have committed murder in 1963 when capital punishment was legal?


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 2:38 pm
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Changing the law so you can execute people speaks volumes about the quality of their justice system and will no doubt come back to haunt them in the future.
Just to re-iterate, this is not what has happened. Pretty sure people are mis-interpreting the last comment in the article that OP linked to.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 2:42 pm
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committing murder is not necessarily as gross a crime as theirs, in my view.

In addition, rape is one thing, rape with an iron bar is in a different league.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 2:54 pm
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He then asked if we should be executing people who were proved to have committed murder in 1963 when capital punishment was legal?

No. The UK is a signatory to the ECHR, which makes capital punishment illegal.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:04 pm
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No. The UK is a signatory to the ECHR, which makes capital punishment illegal.

you <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<----------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the point

At the time we weren't, which was the question, if it's moraly wrong to retrospectively up the punishment, should the reverse be true?


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:20 pm
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My understanding is that they are getting the death penalty due to this being a murder case rather than because the law has been altered to extend the death penalty in rape cases - they are being sentenced under the murder laws that prevailed at the time rather than the new regime for sex offences. Murder has always been a capital crime in India although the death penalty is rarely sought.

Edit - murder has been a capital offence in India since the colonial period, the only major change being its reserved for cases considered truly extreme - hence the judge stating this is "the rarest of the rare"


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:22 pm
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you <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<----------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the point

At the time we weren't, which was the question, if it's moraly wrong to retrospectively up the punishment, should the reverse be true?

It's entirely the point. The state is not allowed to execute people, regardless of when the crime was committed.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:24 pm
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It's entirely the point. The state is not allowed to execute people, regardless of when the crime was committed

<Types slowly>

If the law states that the penalty for a crime is based on what it is at the time of the crime, not as susbsequently changed, then surely that should be the same both ways around: i.e. either penalty should be as at time of crime, or as at time of trial, not as in the example where the punishment for a crime committed when the death penalty was law to be based on current rules. Its contradictory.

Try to move pass the death penalty bit, I think we've got the fact you don't like that and try to grasp the inconsistency between the two things.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:44 pm
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That link to the guardian article makes for some grim reading. The rape and the iron bar thing are horrendous, but its what the fella Ram goes on to do afterwards that beggars belief.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 3:50 pm
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Death is just an easy way out for these criminals.. solitary cell for life should be more like it...and im talking third world solitary prison...and believe me you will prefer death than this.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 4:03 pm
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Berm Bandit the answer is no because we would be executing them in 2013 and there is no such punishment now and the execution would therefor be a criminal act.

The punishment at the time idea flows for the idea that you can't retrospectively change the law to make something that was legal illegal . For example Mountain biking on a bridleway, if the ramblers association come to power they could legitimately outlaw it but they could not say any one who had done so prior to their law was a criminal. In the same way one cannot change the law to increase the sanction for something that has already happened.

There is no real inconsistency in acknowledging the world has moved on and the death penalty has now been abolished.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 4:03 pm
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If the law states that the penalty for a crime is based on what it is at the time of the crime, not as susbsequently changed, then surely that should be the same both ways around: i.e. either penalty should be as at time of crime, or as at time of trial, not as in the example where the punishment for a crime committed when the death penalty was law to be based on current rules. Its contradictory.

Again no, because the law states that the death penalty is illegal, regardless of when the crime was committed. The death penalty is not a sentencing option available to any judge.

In any case, there is no contradiction: the death penalty was not mandatory.

Try to move pass the death penalty bit, I think we've got the fact you don't like that and try to grasp the inconsistency between the two things.

The point about the ECHR is specifically related to the death penalty.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 4:05 pm
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you could always ask the victim for her views on the sentence, Oh hang on that might be a tad difficult.
absolutely no sympathy for them, in fact Id happily shoot them myself.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 4:06 pm
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On this subject:-

[url= http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-10/one-in-four-men-surveyed-in-asian-study-say-they-raped.html ]One in Four Men Surveyed in Asian Study Say They Raped[/url]


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 5:35 pm
 mt
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just read that Guardian article, I find it difficult to justify the death penalty but not in this case. Totally tragic and very upsetting, I'd still ask her family especially her father. Perhaps he is a better man than many.


 
Posted : 13/09/2013 5:38 pm
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