WHY A POPULIST LAW CAN HARM MORE THAN HEAL

NIRBHAYA, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student and a victim of rape-mutilation-murder, died on December 29, 2012.

- KAJAL BASU

Her agonising death, two weeks after her gangrape in a bus in New Delhi, set the country ablaze with outrage.

The crime's lividness led to the central government enacting the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act-the Nirbhaya Act― which came into effect on February 3, 2013, two months after Nirbhaya's passing.

The new law instituted significant changes in legislation on anti-women offences. It broadened the definition of rape, expanding it from forced penile insertion to penetration by anything wielded by the attacker into any orifice. It increased the age of consent to 18. It also protracted the period of imprisonment and introduced the possibility of capital punishment should a sexual transgression lead to death.

A little more than 12 years later, this August 9, Abhaya, a postgraduate trainee doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, was found raped and murdered with extreme violence. Protests led by junior doctors at the 26 staterun hospitals-cum-medical colleges in Bengal have been roiling Kolkata since, putting the state government on the backfoot and inviting suo motu censure from the Supreme Court. Less than a month after Abhaya's murder, the Bengal assembly, reduced to flatfooted anxiety by popular birse, passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2024 with surprising unanimity even from the opposition benches.