rd in bringing perpetrators in such cases to justice.Indeed, it s arguably only the very high profile that surrounds this case that s led to the speed with which the case has come before court. Within three weeks, five men accused of a wide range of crimes in the case were fomally charged Thursday. A sixth faces a case in juvenile court. Such speed is hardly usual in India.Bringing charges, of course, is one thing, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - toms shoes . Securing a conviction is quite another. And India s history shows difficulty in securing a conviction in a rape case, and the high probability that a conviction might be overturned, have been features of the criminal justice system right from the establishment of the Indian Penal Code in 1860.Many readers will probably be aware that Thomas Macaulay was the architect of India s education system. But among the many other important ways in which he shaped British and, indeed, contemporary India, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - cheaptomsshoessalei.com , a commission he headed formed the basis for the IPC. Much as with the introduction of English education, Lord Macaulay s intention was to create a criminal law for India modeled on that of Great Britain.As things turned out, the architects of the Indian republic chose to retain the IPC in the new, http://www.cheaptomsshoessalei.com - toms shoes sale , independent India virtually unchanged from the colonial period, a legacy Indians still live with to this day.While inheriting the English legal system might have been good in some respects, one legacy has been very damaging: the way that 19th-century British law thought about the crime of rape.As persuasively argued by Elizabeth Kolsky a history professor at Villanova University in the U.S., the continuing difficulty with securing convictions in rape cases in India is a direct product of this colonial history.As I ve written in several recent pieces, in 2011, only 26% of rape trials ended in conviction. In Delhi for instance, where this crime took place, there s only been one conviction out of 635 cases of rape reported in 2011. If the conviction rate is low now, the situation wasn t any better in the colonial period.We can t make a direct comparison with pre-independence times because we don t have detailed records of what happened at the level of trial courts then. But we can draw inferences from what happened in the High Courts, which were and remain courts of appeal for lower-court decisions.According to data analyzed by Ms. Kolsky, between 1904 and 1947, there were 75 rape convictions sent up to the High Court for review. The High Courts confirmed only 37% of convictions from the lower courts. In the remaining cases, they either acquitted or reduced the sentences of the defendants.The reasons for the difficulty in securing and upholding rape convictions in India at that time, as now, can be traced to the colonial legal system, as Ms. Kolsky argues.Principally, it is the extremely strict evidentiary requirements under the law that are needed to establish that a rape occurred, much higher than in other crimes of violence. To put it bluntly, the victim is as much on trial as her alleged attacker.Without going into
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