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FILE PHOTO: Members of media speak in front of cameras outside the premises of the Supreme Court in New Delhi, India October 13, 2022. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis/File Photo
Indian government opposes criminalizing marital rape as “excessively harsh”
India’s Supreme Court is hearing petitions this month and will soon rule on whether to criminalize marital rape, but the government opposes the idea, stating it would be “excessively harsh.” The Interior Ministry argues that while a man should face “penal consequences” for raping his wife, criminalizing the act “may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage.”
The petitions seek to overturn Section 375 of India’s Penal Codewhich lists “exemptions” for sex to be considered rape, including “by a man with his own wife” if she is not a minor. A lower Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the issue in 2022, but when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government overhauled the country’s penal code in July, the exemption stayed on the books. Modi’s party, the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, has longopposed changes for reasons of “illiteracy, poverty, social customs and values.”
But activists argue the 164-year-old law must be amended to combat systemic gender inequality. Sexual violence against women is rampant in India, andmedical workers are still striking over the August rape and murder of a trainee female doctor in Kolkata, for which a man was formally charged last Monday.
Around the world, more than 100 countries have outlawed marital rape. We’re watching whether public outcry – and a high court verdict - will force Modi’s government to do the same.
A man is vaccinated at a monkeypox vaccination clinic run by CIUSSS public health authorities in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, June 6, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Mpox hits the 6ix, Canadian rail strike looms, sexual assaults in the US military go undercounted, J&J looks to close out talcum powder suit, the problem with city birds
2: The two largest Canadian rail companies are threateningto lock out their employees as soon as Aug. 22 amid stalled labor talks with the Teamsters union. Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway are at loggerheads with the union over a new contract, with the Teamsters demanding more rail safety guarantees. Last week a federal mediator was brought in to speed up the talks.
6.48 billion: American pharma giant Johnson & Johnson is preparing to show it has widespread support for a proposed $6.48 billion bankruptcy settlement with claimants who say its talcum powder products gave them cancer. Tens of thousands of claimants were given until late July to vote on the proposal, and a 75% threshold is required for approval. J&J is attempting to offload the liability onto a newly created subsidiary in a maneuver that has already been rejected twice by federal judges.
1/4: Nearly one quarter of active-duty women in the US military experienced sexual assault between 2001 and 2021, according to a new study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Black women and LGBTQ service members were disproportionately likely to be victims, said the report, which also estimated that the number of sexual assault cases in the military in 2021 and 2023 was likely twice as high as Pentagon estimates, reaching more than 70,000 in each of those years.
3: You may remember the children’s story about “country mouse and city mouse,” but now there’s “country bird and city bird” — and in this tale, the urban fowl are particularly foul. A new global study says city-dwelling birds — ducks, crows, gulls, and geese, in particular — are three times more likely than their country cousins to host antibiotic-resistant strains of disease. “Anti-microbial resistance,” as it’s known, is a major concern for epidemiologists, especially given the increased transmission of disease from animals to humans.
FILE PHOTO: Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, California, USA, 04 October 2022. Harvey Weinstein was extradited from New York to Los Angeles to face sex-related charges.
Harvey Weinstein’s NY conviction overturned
The New York Court of Appeals overturned a 2020 sex crime conviction against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, citing procedural errors.
What’s the issue? The court found that the judge presiding over the 2020 trial had inappropriately allowed testimony from women who alleged Weinstein had sexually assaulted them in incidents unrelated to the cases at hand. The higher court ruled that doing so had unfairly prejudiced the jury.
The improper testimony comes from blurry lines around the use of “prior bad acts” witnesses. Generally speaking, courts don’t allow testimony to simply portray the defendant as having a low character. But in certain cases, prosecutors can call witnesses of a defendant’s past behavior to establish a motive or intent in another incident.
What’s next? Weinstein will stay behind bars, as he is still under a 16-year prison sentence from a separate case in California, which could amount to a life sentence for the 72-year-old. New York prosecutors, meanwhile, indicated they would pursue a new trial.