Daily Times

With the emergence of the culture of the social media in the past few years, a lot has changed. One is now able to connect with friends and family, worldwide, sitting within the confines of one’s home. Work and information have become much easier as accessibility is at one’s fingertips; letters have taken the form of e-mail, reaching the recipient within seconds; pictures and videos can be shared with a group of friends, family or the entire world instantly; blogs are created by individuals and organisations to express their personal views and/or to disseminate those of others. But like with everything else in life, if used responsibly the internet and the social networking sites are a great asset, but the danger lies in the vast world of opportunity in cyber space to destroy lives in the real world.

Steubenville, the horrific ordeal of a 16-year-old girl, who was at a party with friends and turned out to be a major source of ‘partying’ for two boys — Ma’lik Richmond, 16, and Trent Mays, 17, two members of the high school football team — who carried the intoxicated and unconscious girl from house to house, subjecting her to sexual assault and rape. Mays took photographs of the naked girl and disseminated them on social media, and that is how the victim came to know of the assault. When her parents gave the evidence to the police, the victim was threatened and ostracised; two girls were taken into custody for harassment and intimidation. Richmond and Mays were convicted this week for rape; Mays was also sentenced for taking and distributing photos and videos. One author wrote: “Social-media accounts, self-made videos, photos and classless text messages exposed an entire world that seemed like a Hollywood script of a high school team out of control.”

In the aftermath of the brutal gang-rape and subsequent death of the 23-year-old woman in Delhi last December, the Lok Sabha passed the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2013 this week. Last week, Ram Singh, one of the six accused in the case, reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Tihar Jail. The Bill passed by the Lok Sabha is comprehensive and encompasses significant changes in laws pertaining to rape, trafficking, acid throwing, sexual harassment, evidence, and protection of children from sexual acts. The amendments to the provisions of rape by virtue of this Bill carry an extensive definition and form, including custodial and institutional rape and rape of a woman by ‘a relative, guardian or teacher of, or a person in a position of trust or authority’, rape during communal or sectarian violence, raping a pregnant woman or one who is under 16 years of age or one who is incapable of giving consent; or the rape of a woman where the rapist is in a position of control or dominance over her, or of a woman suffering from mental or physical disability; or rape which causes grievous bodily harm or maims or disfigures or endangers the life of a woman; or repeated rape on the same woman. All these offences carry a minimum mandatory 10 years rigorous imprisonment sentence, which may extend to life, which in these cases means the rest of the perpetrator’s natural life. Unfortunately, there is no death penalty for rape except in cases where the victim dies as a result of the incident or is left in a persistent vegetative state.

The Bill includes provisions for identification of accused and the concept of vulnerable witnesses or victims ‘under the age of 15 years or above the age of 65 years or a woman or a mentally or physically disabled person’. The law requires that a judicial magistrate conduct the identification proceedings in a manner in which the identifying witness is comfortable and in case of a mentally or physically disabled person the proceedings have to be video-graphed. Only a woman police officer or a woman officer can record the statement of a woman who has been a victim of the offence, and in case she is temporarily or permanently mentally or physically disabled, a Judicial Magistrate has to take the assistance of an interpreter or a special educator in recording the statement and the same has to be video-graphed. A woman victim of rape or any other sexual offence who is under 18 years of age has protection during trial of not being confronted by the accused.

A section on ‘voyeurism’ has also been inserted that punishes ‘any man who watches, or captures the image of a woman engaging in a private act in circumstances where she would usually have the expectation of not being observed either by the perpetrator or by any other person at the behest of the perpetrator or disseminates such image’. The definition of consent takes into account unsoundness of mind, intoxication, administration of any stupefying or unwholesome substance by which a woman is unable to understand the nature and consequences of that to which she gives consent. If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife who lives separately from him, without her consent, he is liable to a minimum mandatory of two years of imprisonment, which may extend to seven. The best thing about this Bill is that nearly all the amended, substituted or newly inserted offences are cognizable.

Recently, a British friend of mine who regularly shares jokes via e-mail with a group of friends, including me, sent an e-mail captioned ‘20 Reasons NOT to Drink with Friends with Camera Phones’. Contained in it were pictures of unconscious people, passed out apparently from excessive drinking, at the receiving end of their friends’ practical jokes. Some of these pictures appeared to be benign enough: passed out individuals with heads covered in shaving foam, faces painted, objects balanced on their limp bodies but there were a few that showed people puking, urinating in their pants, defecating, falling off toilets and then there were a couple that showed semi-naked individuals who had been photographed while unconscious. The first reaction of any individual would be to laugh at these pictures — at the funny side of life — but then when you get a chance to look at them again, you realise that these pictures are not of some inanimate object or some form of animation but of real live, identifiable persons. The very fact that one’s friends, let alone a stranger, would photograph and film one in a vulnerable position — exposed — and then proceed to share the same with the entire world, uploading on various social media sites and have a good laugh about it, should enrage all of us. In the Steubenville case, this turned out to be the evidence that nailed the coffin.

The Lok Sabha has passed a tremendous protective Bill but it still needs to be passed by the Rajya Sabha — the upper house — in order to become law. Pakistan’s parliament despite remaining in power for five years was unable to come up with anything that even comes close to the Indian Bill. Some media and members of the Steubenville community are speculating on the clean past and destroyed future of the two convicts; like in nearly all rape cases, the blame lies with the victim and apology with the rapists. There are aggressors like Singh, Richmond and Mays, but the protectors need to do their job right: to tackle them and their apologists.

The writer is an advocate of the High Court