Unnao rape case: Indian woman set on fire on way to hearing dies - BBC News

An Indian woman who was set on fire on her way to testify against her alleged rapists has died of her injuries.

The 23-year-old died late on Friday after suffering cardiac arrest at a Delhi hospital. She had 90% burns.

She was attacked on Thursday as she was walking to a hearing in the rape case she filed against two men in March in Unnao, in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Five men, including the alleged rapists, have been arrested, Indian police say.

The sister of the victim, whose name has not been released, told the BBC that she wanted the death penalty for the pair.

She said the family would continue to fight the case against them in court.

Rape and sexual violence against women have been in focus in India since the December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in the capital, Delhi.

But there has been no sign that crimes against women are abating.

According to government figures, police registered 33,658 cases of rape in India in 2017, an average of 92 rapes every day.

Unnao district has itself been in the news over another rape case.

Police opened a murder investigation against a ruling party lawmaker in July after a woman who accused him of rape was seriously injured in a car crash. Two of her aunts were killed and her lawyer was injured.

Separately, on Friday, Indian police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a young female vet in the southern city of Hyderabad last week.

That case sparked widespread outrage, and the killing of the suspects, in what rights activists believe may have been an extra-judicial killing, sparked jubilation among local residents.

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2019-12-07 06:56:44Z
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Paris travel nightmare enters second day as hundreds of miles of traffic jams reported around French capital - Fox News

More than 200 miles of roads in and around Paris were reported to be clogged with traffic jams Friday as a general strike aimed at President Emmanuel Macron's plans to overhaul the country’s pension system continues to wreak havoc on commuters and tourists.

For a second straight day, subway stations surrounding the Eiffel Tower and other attractions remained shut down, leaving visitors scrambling for ways to get around one of the world’s most popular travel destinations.

“I arrived in Paris today, but I have been stuck for around two hours just trying to find a bus or a train," Zaeen Shoii, a tourist from Pakistan, told the Associated Press. "But everything has been delayed, so I'm just waiting for the next bus now.”

And the travel disruptions aren’t expected to go away anytime soon as unions on strike are standing firm in their opposition to Macron.

“We’re going to protest for a week at least, and at the end of that week it’s the government that’s going to back down,” Patrick Dos Santos, a transportation employee, told Reuters.

FIRES ERUPT IN PARIS AS GENERAL STRIKE CREATES TRAVEL NIGHTMARE, SHUTS DOWN EIFFEL TOWER

A man stands on a traffic light during a demonstration in Paris on Thursday. (AP)

Macron's idea is to unify France's 42 different pension schemes into a single one, giving all workers the same general rights. So-called special regimes, linked to certain professions like train drivers, allow workers to get early retirement or other benefits.

But the reform also is aimed at saving money, and teachers are among many who worry it will leave them with less money at the end of their careers.

At least 800,000 people marched across France on Thursday in opposition to the reforms, as the strike shuttered schools and some public services and disrupted hospitals and refineries.

A massive march that was held in Paris started peacefully before some protesters engaged in clashes with police, who responded by firing volleys of tear gas. Other demonstrators were spotted hurling flares, smashing store windows and setting fires in eastern Paris.

Riot police officers secure an area as some demonstrators were seen smashing store windows, setting fires and hurling flares in eastern Paris Thursday. (AP)

Police arrested 71 people in the French capital Thursday and clashes were also reported in the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, and Rennes, according to the BBC.

MACRON VOWS TO FIGHT HATE 'UNTIL OUR DEAD CAN SLEEP IN PEACE' AFTER JEWISH GRAVES APPEAR DEFACED WITH SWASTIKAS

As of Friday morning, more than 217 miles of roads in and around Paris were snarled with traffic jams, the station adds. More than half of the city’s 16 subway lines remain shut down and dozens of flights from the city’s major airports have been canceled or delayed.

Macron's government has been negotiating with unions and others for months about the reforms but won't release the details of the proposed changes until next week. The government says it will keep the official retirement age at 62, but the plan is expected to encourage people to work longer.

People fill the streets during a demonstration in Paris on Thursday. (AP)

The uncertainty about what the plan will entail is feeding public worry. Polls suggest most French people support the strike and protest movement, at least for now, in hopes it pushes the government to pay more heed to workers' worries.

Some seven in 10 French employees work in the private sector, and the strikes are primarily in the public sector. But the retirement changes will affect everyone, and the demonstrations have included private-sector workers, too.

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Commuters and parents struggling to get to work and school Friday had mixed feelings about the strikes and the reform.

"I understand, striking is a constitutional right but there should at least be a partial (subway) service," Mira Ghaleni told the Associated Press as she tried to get her son to school in eastern Paris. "It’s really a disaster for the people, and the politicians should do something because we really had enough. One day, it’s OK, but I think it will last longer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-12-06 13:20:54Z
52780459614953

France Braces for Second Day of Pension Strikes as Unions Dig In - The New York Times

PARIS — Angry railway employees, teachers and other workers in France showed no signs of backing down from a nationwide strike on Friday, having brought public transportation to a standstill in a protest over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the nation’s pension system.

Travel was expected to be severely limited between French cities on Friday, with nine out of 10 high-speed trains and seven out of 10 regional express trains likely to be canceled. Stations around the country were almost empty, and some schools remained closed.

In Paris, most metro lines were shut down and bus services were heavily disrupted. The streets were filled with more bicycles and electric scooters than usual, as Parisians used alternative measures to zip around stalled traffic in parts of the capital.

Transportation disruptions were expected to continue into the weekend and early next week, and labor unions announced on Friday that they were planning for new demonstrations on Tuesday, including a march in southern Paris.

Bernadette Groison, the head of one of France’s largest teachers union, told reporters after a meeting with other labor groups that they were “determined” to make the strikes last.

“This is not a mood swing lasting a couple days,” she said.

The government was faced with huge protests in Paris and other cities on Thursday, some of the biggest in recent years. The authorities estimated that at least 800,000 people demonstrated across the country, with labor unions putting the figure at 1.5 million.

France’s health minister, Agnès Buzyn, said that the government had “heard” the protesters’ message. “We know the anger” of the French people, Ms. Buzyn told Europe 1 radio.

The government said it was open to discussions about the details of Mr. Macron’s plan, but it showed no signs of retreating from its broad outlines. Seeking to streamline France’s generous pension system by combining a complex web of 42 pension schemes, it would create a points-based system for every worker, regardless of status or sector.

The lack of specifics has left many French residents, many of whom distrust Mr. Macron, believing that their pensions will decrease.

It is not clear, for instance, when the pension changes would go into effect and for which generation, or how workers currently in a special pension scheme, like railway workers, would make the transition to a unified scheme. It is also unclear how difficult working conditions would be taken into account.

Jean-Paul Delevoye, a French politician whom Mr. Macron has put in charge of a report on pension changes, acknowledged on Thursday that some workers felt they would be cheated out of benefits that had been promised to them years ago.

But he said that a universal points-based system would be “more understandable” and fairer. “We will bring answers to the worries that are being expressed,” he said.

Mr. Delevoye’s comments on Friday came a day after transportation workers, hospitals employees, refinery staff, garbage collectors, teachers, police officers and firefighters took to the streets to express their discontent over Mr. Macron’s plans.

Sporadic violence peppered the protests in Paris, Rennes, Bordeaux and other cities. The police fired tear gas as they faced off with some protesters.

Édouard Philippe, France’s prime minister, told reporters on Thursday evening that despite the scattered clashes between the police and violent groups called “breakers,” the “demonstrations went fine pretty much everywhere in France.”

Labor union leaders are scheduled to meet with the government on Monday, and Mr. Philippe is expected to give the “general architecture” of the pension plans next week. But it is unclear whether that will placate the striking workers, some of whom have vowed to continue until the plans are scrapped altogether.

Philippe Martinez, the head of the General Confederation of Labor, one of the largest unions opposed to the pension overhaul, called for renewed pressure on the government.

“Strikes need to spread to all companies,” Mr. Martinez said on LCI, a television news channel.

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2019-12-06 11:18:00Z
52780459614953

India Police Kill 4 Rape Suspects Already In Custody - NPR

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Students at Delhi University Thursday demanding that the suspects in a rape case in southern India be hanged within six months of conviction. The march was also in support of a women's rights activist on indefinite hunger strike seeking swift justice for rape victims. The four rape suspects were killed Friday while in police custody. NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

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NurPhoto via Getty Images

Before dawn Friday, police transported four suspects to the scene of a crime that has outraged their nation: A roadside in southern India, where the men are accused of gang-raping a woman, suffocating her and setting her body on fire.

The woman's Nov. 27 murder sparked protests and candlelight vigils across India. Within 48 hours, police had arrested the four, their brutality allegedly caught on CCTV cameras.

Police said they needed to question the suspects at the crime scene — before daybreak — to have them retrace their steps and collect more evidence.

But by sunrise, all four suspects had been shot dead by police. They had yet to be charged.

"Law has done its duty," the top police official on the case, V.C. Sajjanar, told reporters at a news conference.

Hundreds of revelers gathered where the rape had occurred — on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad — hoisting police officers on their shoulders above the crowd and showering them with rose petals.

"Long live police!" they chanted. The victim's father was quoted as saying his daughter's soul is now at peace.

But human rights activists and some politicians decried Friday's killings as an extrajudicial execution that amounts to mob justice.

"If you're going to kill the accused before any due process of law has been followed, then what's the point of having courts, law and police?" Maneka Gandhi, a lawmaker from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) told reporters outside parliament in New Delhi.

The local branch of the BJP in Telangana, where Hyderabad is the state capital, issued a statement saying: "India is not a banana republic and is bound by legal and constitutional framework."

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both called for an investigation.

"We still don't know whether the actual perpetrators have been caught, because we do not know whether police that are incompetent enough to let suspects escape should be trusted to have solved the case," Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told NPR.

A police claim of self-defense

Sajjanar said the suspects were taken back to the crime scene so that they could lead police to where they had buried the victim's cell phone and other personal items. He said the alleged rapists had not been handcuffed, and managed to overpower ten police officers.

The suspects threw stones at police, injuring two officers, Sajjanar said. After two of the suspects snatched officers' firearms, all four were shot dead in self-defense, he said.

Sajjanar was involved in a similar case in Dec. 2008, Indian media reported, in which three suspects were killed by police after being arrested for allegedly throwing acid on two female engineering students in another town near Hyderabad.

After that incident, he reportedly earned the nickname "the encounter cop." (In India, the word "encounter" connotes any suspicious killing of a suspect in police custody.)

Security forces across India have been accused over the years of carrying out extrajudicial killings. In 2017, India's Supreme Court ordered an inquiry into more than 1,500 deaths in the country's northeast, where police officers had allegedly staged fake attacks in order to kill criminals in their custody.

Police attribute most deaths while in custody to suicide or natural causes but, as Human Rights Watch noted in a 2016 report, family members in many cases allege torture by the police.

Demands for swift justice

The name of the 27-year-old rape victim in Hyderabad is not being reported, in accordance with Indian law to protect the identity of those believed to be victims of sexual violence.

Police say she phoned her sister on the day of her death to say her motor scooter had a flat tire, but that a friendly truck driver was helping her. Authorities allege four men stealthily deflated her tire, then posed as good Samaritans before raping and murdering her. It's unclear whether she was still alive when they doused her body with fuel and set it aflame.

In 2012, a physiotherapy student was gang-raped on a New Delhi bus, garnering widespread protests and prompting authorities to increase prison terms for convicted rapists. Four men have been convicted in that case, and sentenced to death. One has since died by suicide in prison.

Swati Maliwal, chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, says she's frustrated that the Delhi convicts have not yet been executed. In other cases, trials are often delayed for years and justice is difficult to attain.

She said that while she did not condone extrajudicial killings, she understood why police in Hyderabad might have taken matters into their own hands.

"There is a huge possibility that the police felt that if they let these people just go through the court process, they will never get the punishment that they deserve," Maliwal told NPR by phone from a protest camp in New Delhi, where she was on the fourth day of a hunger strike to raise awareness of sexual violence.

Last year, a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked India as the most dangerous country in the world for women, because of sexual violence. In 2017, the most recent year for which data were available, there were more than 33,000 cases of rape reported in India, according to national crime statistics. By comparison, the FBI says about 100,000 rapes were reported that year in the United States, which has about a quarter of India's population.

But many cases of sexual violence in India are believed to go unreported. Unlike the Hyderabad victim, who was an urban professional attacked by strangers, most victims are poor rural women and their attackers are often people they know.

Maliwal appealed to the Indian government to fast-track trials for rapists — and devote greater police resources to fighting sexual violence — in order to avoid mob justice.

"What kind of a country do we want? Do we want to go through proper processes and systems?" she asks. "Or do we want results like this?"

NPR producer Sushmita Pathak contributed to this report

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2019-12-06 13:11:00Z
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After Horrific Rape in India, Police Kill 4 Suspects - The New York Times

NEW DELHI — One of India’s most troubling rape cases of recent months was brought to a sudden and shocking end on Friday.

Four men who had been accused of raping and killing a young woman near the southern Indian city of Hyderabad were taken under a bridge by police officers and shot dead in the early hours of the morning.

How the events played out is not entirely clear.

The police, who had been under enormous pressure to bring the rapists to justice, said that they had taken the men to the scene of the crime at 3 a.m. and were in the process of watching them re-enact the attack when two of the men tried to grab the officers’ guns, leaving the officers no choice but to shoot the suspects dead.

The officers are being hailed as heroes, and were showered with rose petals by residents who thronged the streets of Hyderabad to celebrate what they saw as an act of swift retribution for a horrific crime. So many people poured into the streets on Friday to celebrate that traffic was brought to a standstill. Firecrackers could be heard exploding across the city. People hugged and passed out sweets.

“The law has done its duty,” said V.C. Sajjanar, a top police official.

But the circumstances behind the killings have invited suspicion. Human rights activists have wondered if the police simply executed the men and fabricated a story to cover their tracks.

“It’s just the outcry that pressured the government to do away with the four men and this is a total and utter violation of human rights,” said Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Center for Social Research, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Ms. Kumari called the killings “a total failure of the criminal justice system.”

“We are moving toward a vigilante justice system,” she added.

Too often, India makes international headlines for horrendous rapes. In 2012, a woman was abducted and brutalized on a moving bus in New Delhi by a gang of young men. After she died from her injuries, the outrage over her assault drove India to implement a series of measures to curb sexual violence, such as stricter punishments, victims’ hotlines and public awareness campaigns.

But the cases have kept coming.

Last year, virtually the entire male staff at an apartment building in the southeastern coastal city of Chennai were accused of raping a disabled girl.

This year, according to the police, a popular elected representative from Unnao district in northern India tried to kill a young woman who had accused him of rape, arranging for a truck to smash into her car.

And just this week, a young woman was set on fire as she was making her way to court to testify against men whom she had accused of rape.

The Hyderabad case centers on a young veterinarian who had parked her motor scooter near a toll plaza on the evening of Nov. 27 and came back from an appointment to find that its rear tire was flat. A group of truck drivers offered to help her, the police said, but she suspected that she was in danger. In her last call, to her sister to tell her what she was doing, she sounded scared.

The police said that the men had in fact deflated the tire as part of a plot to kidnap the young woman. The police added that the men had been drinking. They dragged the woman, who the police said was in her mid-20s, to a bushy area nearby and assaulted her. They then suffocated her and burned her body.

Police said they caught the four men — two truck drivers and their assistants — through CCTV footage and witnesses.

The suspects had been in custody for about a week as the young woman’s family, activists, ordinary citizens and powerful politicians called for them to be punished. Pressure was raised further after protests erupted in several cities and outrage over the young woman’s death swept across social media.

On Friday, as the news spread that all the suspects were dead, many people were quick to praise the police.

“I congratulate the Hyderabad police and the leadership that allows the police to act like police,” Rajyavardhan Rathore, a member of Parliament from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, said in a Twitter post.

The victim’s family also seemed to approve of the men’s deaths.

“Justice has been done,” the victim’s mother said, according to the BBC. “I never thought we would get justice. No other girl should experience what my daughter did.”

Police officials said that two officers had been injured on Friday morning when the suspects tried to escape. When asked why they brought the men to the crime scene in the middle of the night, police officials said it was to protect them from enraged mobs who might have harmed them had the visit taken place in daytime.

Extrajudicial killings are common in India. The term for a police killing here is “encounter” and in recent years the Indian police have killed countless people in such encounters. Many of the killings are later revealed to have been staged or planned.

In Friday’s case, few people are expected to rally to the defense of the dead suspects. If the killings were staged, that might have been part of the calculation.

Amnesty International India said the killings raised “deeply disturbing questions about the state of justice in India.”

Mrs. Kumari, the director of the nonprofit research group, said, “Maybe people are happy today.”

“But tomorrow,” she added, “you can pick up any four people and kill them for any reason.”

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2019-12-06 10:57:00Z
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Hyderabad case: Police shoot dead four suspects in gang-rape and murder - CNN

The men had been arrested in connection with the gang-rape and murder of a 27-year-old veterinarian who was strangled and her body set alight in the southern city of Hyderabad, in Telangana state last week.

The woman's charred remains were found near a highway underpass on November 27, sparking nationwide outrage and protests in several major cities including Bengaluru and India's capital, New Delhi. Many of the demonstrators carried placards and chanted slogans demanding the death penalty for the suspects.

The victim has not been publicly identified due to India's laws against naming sexual assault victims.

Prakash Reddy, Deputy Commissioner of Shamshabad Police in Hyderabad, told CNN the four men were killed in "cross-fire" when police had taken them to the scene of the crime to reconstruct the attack.

Reddy said that the four suspects were aged between 20 and 26 years old. Two of the men were truck drivers and two were truck cleaners. They had been taken to the spot to reconstruct the crime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Friday.

"Some of the accused snatched the weapons from the police personnel and fired at them," said Reddy. "In self-defense, the police fired at the accused."

An ambulance was called but the men were pronounced dead at the scene, he added.

No details were made available regarding the number of police at the scene during the incident, or how the four accused had managed to obtain the weapons from the officers.

Hyderabad police said they will hold a press conference later on Friday regarding the incident.

Speaking to local television on Friday, the woman's father, who has also not been named, said that the actions of the police would mean that his "daughter's soul will finally attain peace."

"I want to congratulate the government of Telangana, the police and the people who have been supporting me," he added.

A sister of the victim said she believed the incident would deter others from raping in future.

"The accused have been encountered. And I feel very happy," she said.

But others say the circumstances of the killings have raised questions over whether the police took the law into their own hands.

"If you kill them beforehand with guns, then what is the point of having courts, having the police, having laws? Then you just pick up a gun and kill whoever you want to. It should have been done through the legal route," said Maneka Gandhi, member of parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP.)

Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy, who has worked on women's rights and rape cases, said in a tweet that the deaths of the four suspects means it will remain unknown whether they were guilty or innocent.

"Now nobody will ever know if the four men killed by the police were innocent men, arrested fast to show action. And whether four of the most brutal rapists roam free, to rape and kill more women," she said.

Calculated attack

Police allege the 27-year-old was approached by two of the men after noticing a flat tire on her scooter.

According to police, the two men were members of a gang of four who had conspired to sexually assault her. One of the men had let the air out of the tire deliberately, police said.

Three of the gang are alleged to have overpowered the victim and dragged her to an enclosed area a few feet away. They covered her mouth with their hands to silence her.

The four men are then alleged to have taken turns raping the victim, before asphyxiating her and transporting the dead body to the outskirts of Hyderabad. In an effort to conceal their crime, the men are alleged to have poured fuel on her body and set it alight.

Lawmakers in India's Parliament have condemned the Hyderabad incident, demanding stricter legislation and swifter punishment for rapists. Some even called for rapists to be publicly lynched or castrated.

According to India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police in India every day. In 2017, more than 32,000 rapes were reported across the country -- but experts say that the real number is likely much higher, owing to the shame attached to sexual assault and the social barriers faced by victims.

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2019-12-06 10:44:00Z
52780464691025

Hyderabad case: Police shoot dead four suspects in gang-rape and murder - CNN

The men had been arrested in connection with the gang-rape and murder of a 27-year-old veterinarian who was strangled and her body set alight in the southern city of Hyderabad, in Telangana state last week.

The woman's charred remains were found near a highway underpass on November 27, sparking nationwide outrage and protests in several major cities including Bengaluru and India's capital, New Delhi. Many of the demonstrators carried placards and chanted slogans demanding the death penalty for the suspects.

The victim has not been publicly identified due to India's laws against naming sexual assault victims.

Prakash Reddy, Deputy Commissioner of Shamshabad Police in Hyderabad, told CNN the four men were killed in "cross-fire" when police had taken them to the scene of the crime to reconstruct the attack.

Reddy said that the four suspects were aged between 20 and 26 years old. Two of the men were truck drivers and two were truck cleaners. They had been taken to the spot to reconstruct the crime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Friday.

"Some of the accused snatched the weapons from the police personnel and fired at them," said Reddy. "In self-defense, the police fired at the accused."

An ambulance was called but the men were pronounced dead at the scene, he added.

No details were made available regarding the number of police at the scene during the incident, or how the four accused had managed to obtain the weapons from the officers.

Hyderabad police said they will hold a press conference later on Friday regarding the incident.

Speaking to local television on Friday, the woman's father, who has also not been named, said that the actions of the police would mean that his "daughter's spirit will finally attain peace."

"I want to congratulate the government of Telangana, the police and the people who have been supporting me," he added.

A sister of the victim said she believed the incident would deter others from raping in future.

"The accused have been encountered. And I feel very happy," she said.

But others say the circumstances of the killings have raised questions over whether the police took the law into their own hands.

"If you kill them beforehand with guns, then what is the point of having courts, having the police, having laws? Then you just pick up a gun and kill whoever you want to. It should have been done through the legal route," said Maneka Gandhi, member of parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP.)

Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy, who has worked on women's rights and rape cases, said in a tweet that the deaths of the four suspects means it will remain unknown whether they were guilty or innocent.

"Now nobody will ever know if the four men killed by the police were innocent men, arrested fast to show action. And whether four of the most brutal rapists roam free, to rape and kill more women," she said.

Calculated attack

Police allege the 27-year-old was approached by two of the men after noticing a flat tire on her scooter.

According to police, the two men were members of a gang of four who had conspired to sexually assault her. One of the men had let the air out of the tire deliberately, police said.

Three of the gang are alleged to have overpowered the victim and dragged her to an enclosed area a few feet away. They covered her mouth with their hands to silence her.

The four men are then alleged to have taken turns raping the victim, before asphyxiating her and transporting the dead body to the outskirts of Hyderabad. In an effort to conceal their crime, the men are alleged to have poured fuel on her body and set it alight.

Lawmakers in India's Parliament have condemned the Hyderabad incident, demanding stricter legislation and swifter punishment for rapists. Some even called for rapists to be publicly lynched or castrated.

According to India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police in India every day. In 2017, more than 32,000 rapes were reported across the country -- but experts say that the real number is likely much higher, owing to the shame attached to sexual assault and the social barriers faced by victims.

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2019-12-06 10:14:00Z
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