‘Attack on anybody’s daughter is attack on ours’: K’taka HC on rape cases

‘Attack on anybody’s daughter is attack on ours’, says the Karnataka High Court while recommending the legislature and the central government to amend provisions of IPC 376 or gang rape and include capital punishment in addition to the existing punishment of life imprisonment and fines.

The division bench of B Veerappa and K Natarajan, on Tuesday, while making the recommendations observed that ‘attack on anybody’s daughter is attack on ours’.  The court also uphold the life sentence imposed on seven accused in the 2012 gang-rape case of a student of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore.

Expressing its anguish, the court said that even after seven decades of independence, women in India are still under threat. The judgement went on to quote Mahatma Gandhi when after the independence he said, “The day a women can walk freely on the roads at night, that day we can say that India has achieved independence”, to point out that we as a society had failed to accomplish the Mahatmas dream.

“It is high time for the legislature/ executive, judiciary, media the fourth estate of democracy and general public to pool in their collective wisdom to curb the menace of rape which is more dangerous that the disease of cancer to the future generation of our great country”, the order read.

Concluding its poignant judgement the bench stated, “We, the judges are the societal parents. If our concern for the society of girls/women can be summed up in one sentence that — An attack on anybody’s daughter is an attack on our daughter”.