新浪科技讯 北京时间7月12日早间消息，美国电信运营商AT&T周三宣布与“混合现实”创业公司Magic Leap达成战略合作。AT&T将投资Magic Leap，并与其在零售方面合作 ... Magic Leap去年展示了名为“Magic Leap One”的首款产品，这是一款所谓的“混合现实”头盔，可连接佩戴在用户腰间的小型计算设备，并配有控制器。头盔本身被称为“Lightwear”，便携式电源和处理器包则被称为“Lightpack”

CHICAGO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc on Tuesday rolled out a new iPad and classroom software aimed at grabbing more of the U.S. education market, but did not cut the price of its entry-level tablet despite schools flocking to laptops costing a third less. Apple is looking to reassert dominance in U.S. schools, where inexpensive laptops running software from Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft Corp now top iPad by sales, offering a cheap way to get to cloud-based productivity tools. The new iPad has a more powerful computing chip and an extensive set of new, free software for teachers to manage students and schoolwork. But the unchanged starting price of $299 for students and $329 for the general public, without a keyboard or case, compares with less than $200 for some Windows and Google Chrome models. Apple shares were down 1.4 percent to $170.26 after the event, slightly better than the NASDAQ Composite, which was down 1.6 percent in midday trading. Some analysts had believed Apple might cut prices, but the company stuck with its more traditional approach of packing more features into a device. Despite the new software, Apple faces a tough battle in the educational market given the popularity of Google and Microsoft’s productivity suites, said Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies. Google’s G Suite fueled Chromebook sales because it was seen as easy to use to manage assignments. “Most teachers don’t look past G Suite for education,” she said. Apple, as part of its response, on Tuesday announced improvements in its iWork suite at an event in Chicago, where school bells and announcements over a public address system directed press and more than 300 teachers into an auditorium at Lane Tech College Prep High School. The event came during a spring buying season when many schools are making purchasing decisions for the upcoming school year. “We’ve been at this for 40 years and we care deeply about education,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said at the event. Apple's Vice-President of iOS, iPad and iPhone Product Marketing, Greg Joswiak, speaks at an education-focused event at Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., March 27, 2018. REUTERS/John GressApple executives said the new iPad works with its pencil accessory and features an upgraded A10 Fusion chip, the same CPU that powers the iPhone 7. It is available immediately. The Apple Pencil remains priced at $99 for the public and $89 for schools, though Lenovo will release a device called Crayon for $49, the first third-party stylus to work with the iPad. Apple made up just 17 percent of the K-12 U.S. educational market in the third quarter, according to data from Futuresource Consulting. Meanwhile 60 percent of mobile computing shipments to schools ran Google’s Chrome and 22 percent had Windows. Chromebooks sold by Dell Technologies Inc cost as little as $189. Microsoft last year introduced an education-focused laptop from Lenovo Group Ltd running Windows 10 S for a similar price. Acer Inc announced a tablet that runs Chrome OS for $329 on Monday that comes with a built-in stylus. Apple in recent years made changes to its operating system so that more than one student can log into an iPad, and to its software to let teachers better manage students. On Tuesday it updated iWork - which includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software - to allow students to take handwritten notes more easily, along with adding more free storage on its iCloud service. Apple also released a new app called Schoolwork to help teachers create assignments and track student progress. Google has a similar app for managing student profiles, but analysts highlighted Apple’s Schoolwork app as unique in helping teachers manage assignments and progress. The previously iPad-focused Classroom teacher administration app would start working on Mac computers in June, Apple said. In the fall Apple will roll out “Everyone Can Create” lessons on video, photography, music, and drawing, joining existing “Everyone Can Code” guides for computer programming skills. Slideshow (12 Images)The new courses highlight features that some low-priced laptops do not have, such as a camera and microphone. “If you look at it as a Chromebook competitor, it’s expensive. But if you look at it and say, I can do music with GarageBand, I can take pictures or use it as a video camera and now I can do (augmented reality) ... it appeals to teachers and schools that want to push the envelope on education,” Milanesi said. Sales of iPads made up just 8.3 percent of Apple’s $229.2 billion total revenue last year, compared with the nearly 62 percent of sales generated by iPhones. Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Peter HendersonOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Despite the call for a boycott, an array of opposition candidates ran across the country, most as independents. Untethered from their parties — and from the scaffolding of support and money that such relationships bring — many of their campaigns barely registered with potential voters, providing little threat to the government-backed candidates of the United Socialist Party.“I don’t know who any of the opposition candidates are,” said Jesús Gómez, 37, the chief of security for a supermarket chain, who was on his way to vote on Sunday in Ocumare del Tuy, a city south of Caracas, the capital.All he was sure of was that he would vote — an expression of his rights, he said — and that he would cast his ballot against the Maduro government, even if he suspected that the electoral process would be riddled with fraud.“Everything’s already prearranged,” he said. “This isn’t a secret at all.”A majority of voters, however, stayed away: The national election board said Sunday night that about 47 percent of registered voters participated.Throughout much of the day, many polling stations around the capital had barely a trickle of voters. In past elections, at least in some places, lines of people numbering in the hundreds snaked down the block and wait times stretched for hours.“Total waste of time!” exclaimed Carlos Paez, a 44-year-old restaurant cook, who on Sunday morning was lifting weights with Edgar Martínez at a makeshift outdoor gym in downtown Caracas. Both men scoffed at the notion of voting; they had better things to do.“So much deception,” added Mr. Martínez, 29, a bartender. “I’m young and I feel this disillusionment with what’s happening. Imagine that!”

Matthew Heimbach, a prominent US neo-nazi, has been arrested on charges of domestic violence, amid a series of events that signal a possible fraying of the modern white nationalist movement in America. Heimbach, whose Traditionalist Worker party group’s slogan is “Fighting for faith, family and folk”, was released from a county jail in Indiana on a $1,000 bond on Tuesday. He had been arrested after a fracas where, according to a police report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), he attacked his wife and also choked into unconsciousness his group’s co-founder – who happens also to be the husband of Heimbach’s mistress. The incident occurred just days after images appeared of Heimbach, teeth gritted, grappling with an anti-Nazi protester on the campus of Michigan State University, where chaos ensued over an appearance by the white nationalist leader Richard Spencer. And after Heimbach’s arrest in the early hours of Tuesday, the Traditionalist Workers party (TWP) spokesman and co-founder, Matt Parrott, whom Heimbach is accused of choking, told the SPLC he was leaving the group, and pulled the TWP website. The incident followed a series of developments among the self-styled “alt-right” in the US, a euphemism for a new breed of white supremacists who shocked the world when a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, featured Nazi-style salutes and chanting and turned extremely violent, leading to the death of an anti-racism activist, Heather Heyer. Spencer announced on Monday that he may suspend his current speaking tour around US colleges because fierce protests were dangerous and the rallies “aren’t fun” any more. Earlier in March Spencer’s lawyer, Kyle Bristow, said he was quitting the white nationalist movement because of his harsh portrayal by the media. And the SPLC reported that its team monitoring far-right hate groups had seen recent signs on extremist chat boards that members of the racist US group Identity Evropa have been leaving in significant numbers. This could not be immediately verified. “It’s remarkable that in the last week, three of the primary intellectual leaders of the alt-right have either left the movement or radically altered their path,” Ryan Lenz, a spokesman for the SPLC told the Guardian on Wednesday. “What we are seeing is a sort of falling apart, or a fraying, of the movement, which really began with Charlottesville, where the so-called Unite the Right rally put them under the harsh light of public scrutiny,” he said. Lenz said it was not yet clear exactly why the movement appeared to be in turmoil. Heimbach, 26, was taken in handcuffs to the Orange County jail in the tiny town of Paoli, Indiana, early on Tuesday, before later being released. He is married to a stepdaughter of Parrott but had been having an affair with Parrott’s wife, according to an account given to Paoli police. On Tuesday night, Parrott had confronted Heimbach over the affair and poked him in the chest, whereupon Heimbach “grabbed and injured my hand … then choked me out with his arm,” Parrott said in a statement to police. Heimbach then reportedly chased Parrott and again choked him until he passed out. The police went to Heimbach’s home where an officer witnessed him having a verbal confrontation and scuffle with his wife while she was putting their young children to bed, during which he “grabbed her face”, causing bleeding, and threw her on the bed. Heimbach was charged on Tuesday with battery and domestic battery committed in the presence of a child under age 16. He was already subject to a suspended sentence of 90 days in jail after he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct last July for repeatedly shoving a young protester at an election rally for Donald Trump.“Matthew Heimbach is now the thuggish face of white nationalism,” said SPLC’s Lenz.The Anti-Defamation League describes the TWP as “a small group that promotes white supremacy and a racist interpretation of Christianity”.Heimbach did not answer a telephone call from the Guardian. Meanwhile Identity Evropa recently boasted on its website that it attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and talked to delegates “about Trumpian things, like immigration and the wall”. Far-right groups such as Identity Evropa and Vanguard America became widely known after Charlottesville, where groupie James Fields is accused of murdering Heyer. Topics The far right Domestic violence US crime Michigan Race news

BEIJING/PARIS (Reuters) - China said on Monday it was investigating former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei for bribery and other violations, days after French authorities said the Chinese official had been reported missing by his wife after traveling to his home country. Under President Xi Jinping, China has been engaged in a sweeping crackdown on official corruption. On Sunday, Interpol, the France-based global police coordination body, said that Meng had resigned as its president. “The investigation against Meng Hongwei taking bribes and suspected violations of law is very timely, absolutely correct and rather wise,” China’s Ministry of Public Security said in a statement on its website. “The investigation of Meng Hongwei fully shows there is no privilege and no exception in front of the law, and anyone who violates the law must be severely punished,” it added. Officials should never be allowed to “negotiate terms or haggle” over positions within the party, the ministry said, referring to China’s ruling Communist Party. French media on Sunday broadcast video of Meng’s wife Grace speaking to a small group of journalists at a hotel in Lyon, her back to a TV camera in order to hide her appearance and her voice trembling. “This is a matter for the international community. It concerns the people of my motherland,” she said. She showed journalists a text message on her mobile phone with an image of a knife, sent by her husband as a way of showing her that he felt he was in danger, French media reported. Meng, 64, became president of the global police cooperation agency in late 2016 amid a broader effort by China to secure leadership posts in international organizations. His appointment prompted concern at the time from rights groups that Beijing might try to leverage his position to pursue dissidents abroad. “Meng’s sudden disappearance ... has clearly undermined China’s own efforts and has lent credence to those who said previously that China was not ready to take on such important international leadership roles,” said Paul Haenle, Director at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center in Beijing. France’s Interior Ministry said on Friday that Meng’s family had not heard from him since Sept. 25, and French authorities said his wife was under police protection in Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, after receiving threats. Presidents of Interpol are seconded from their national administrations and remain in their home post while representing the international policing body. FILE PHOTO: INTERPOL President Meng Hongwei poses during a visit to the headquarters of International Police Organisation in Lyon, France, May 8, 2018. Jeff Pachoud/Pool via Reuters/File PhotoA source at the agency declined to say whether it was usual for an Interpol president to bring his family to France, or whether Interpol provided housing for Meng. Meng’s predecessor, Frenchwoman Mireille Ballestrazzi, lived in Paris and traveled to Lyon for meetings when her presence was required. China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that China would continue to provide support for Interpol’s work. Reporting by Tony Munroe, Stella Qiu and Michael Martina in BEIJING and Richard Lough in PARIS; Editing by Simon Cameron-Mooren and Peter GraffOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Charlie Brown once opined, “I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time.” Unfortunately, some days are worse than others.Another important landmark was lost in the raging wildfire tearing through northern California, the home of Charles M. Schulz, creator of the beloved Peanuts. The cartoonist lived in Santa Rosa for nearly 40 years until his death in 2000.Schulz’s 78-year old widow Jean escaped the fire and is now staying with her son.“It’s the house he died in,” Schulz’s stepson Monte explained to Associated Press. “All of their memorabilia and everything is all gone.” Schulz’s oldest son Craig, who lives nearby, lost his home as well.Fortunately, most of Schulz’s original drawings and cartoon strips have been preserved in the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa. The museum is currently closed due to the fires but has so far not been affected.Considered the deadliest wildfire disaster in California history, 36 people have lost their lives since the fires started last Sunday. Fifteen separate fires have scorched an estimated 19,000 acres across three counties razing vineyards, wineries and homes. More than 20,000 residents have had to evacuate the area.As to dreading what the wildfires might bring today, we are turning to Snoopy for sage advice: “Keep looking up. That’s the secret of life.”

She told the Times, “Barry Lynn acted in bad faith, and you cannot have someone in your organization who you cannot trust.” She fired Mr. Lynn on Wednesday after the Times article revealing the internal discord, in which Mr. Lynn accused Ms. Slaughter of caving to pressure from Google.In the wake of the Times article, others who have worked at New America highlighted different interactions in which they contended that Ms. Slaughter sided with donors — and prospective donors — over her own scholars and fellows.One such incident cited by several current and former New America staffers occurred in 2015, when Ann Marie Sastry, the president and chief executive officer of a Michigan-based advanced battery maker called Sakti3, reached out to Ms. Slaughter to suggest that she or Sakti3 might be interested in funding New America. But Ms. Sastry also expressed concern about an investigation of Sakti3 that was being pursued by Steve LeVine, a journalist who was then writing for Quartz and serving as a New America fellow.After the conversation, Ms. Slaughter shared Ms. Sastry’s concerns with Kevin Delaney, Quartz’s editor in chief, who reached out to the executive directly to give her a chance to address Mr. LeVine’s findings before Quartz published his article. Ms. Sastry never responded, and Quartz published the expose, which made the case that the company failed to live up to its claims.But the episode left some people who were aware of it feeling that Ms. Slaughter “was carrying the C.E.O.’s water,” according to one person familiar with it.Ms. Slaughter later apologized to Mr. LeVine for intervening. Representatives for Quartz and Sakti3 declined to comment on the episode.Ms. Slaughter told The Times on Thursday “I got played and I learned my lesson.”She argued that the situation with Google and Mr. Lynn was not at all analogous. Still, she acknowledged that the pursuit of corporate funding can complicate things for think tanks that will sometimes take stances with which corporate donors may disagree.“There are unavoidable tensions the minute you take corporation funding or foreign government funding,” she said. “But the fact is that it’s very difficult to run a think tank these days with just foundation funding.”

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Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, was paid $102m (£76m) this year after collecting a huge share bonus linked to the iPhone maker’s stock market performance. Cook was paid a basic salary of $3.06m, a cash bonus of $9.3m (up from $5.4m last year), and collected share awards worth $89m taking his total 2017 payout to $102m, Apple disclosed in a regulatory filing. The bonus of 560,000 shares paid out in September. Cook received half the award because Apple’s stock delivered shareholder returns in the top third of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index during the past three years. He got the other 280,000 shares for simply staying in the job.The stock package awarded to Cook when he became chief executive in 2011 was originally valued at $376m, but is now worth much more because Apple shares have increased six-fold since he signed the deal.As long as he remains the boss, Cook will receive 560,000 shares of stock annually until 2020. He will then get 1.26m shares in August 2021 as the final payment under his original contract.Apple’s filing also revealed that it requires Cook to travel by private aircraft “for all business and personal travel” for security reasons. Cook’s use of the private jet for his holidays cost the company $93,000. The cost of his personal security detail was $224,000. Cook collected an extra $104,000 in “vacation cash out”, and his basic $3m salary was increased to $3,057,692 “because 2017 was a 53-week fiscal year, the 2017 salary amounts reflect an extra week of pay”. That extra week’s pay is slightly more than the median US annual household income of $56,516, according to the US Census.Cook’s top five lieutenants were paid about $24.2m each. Luca Maestri, chief financial officer; Angela Ahrendts, head of retail; Johny Srouji, head of hardware technology; Dan Riccio, head of hardware engineering; and Bruce Sewell, the outgoing general counsel, collected $20m in share awards, cash bonuses of $3.1m and basic pay of just over $1m. The amount paid to Jony Ive, the company’s British chief design officer, was not included in the filing. Apple’s shares have increased by more than 200% since Cook became chief executive in August 2011, shortly before founder and previous chief executive Steve Jobs died. The shares peaked at $176.4 on 18 December but have since weakened slightly to $170.60 following reports of weaker than expected demand for its new $999 iPhone X. Topics Executive pay and bonuses Pay Tim Cook Apple news

By Updated Jan. 27, 2019 8:58 pm ET Twin explosions at a Roman Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines killed at least 20 people in a bloody demonstration of remaining extremist threats in a Muslim-majority region where voters last week overwhelmingly backed self-rule and ratified a peace deal between the government and mainstream separatists. The first bomb blasted wooden pews to splinters and killed worshipers attending an early morning Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the city of Jolo, in Sulu province on Sunday. A second bomb outside... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

India’s government on Saturday prescribed the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under 12 to help combat an increase in violent crime against women.An ordinance was approved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet and was being sent to the president for approval, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.The ordinance...

A 16-year-old girl has been kidnapped and gang raped, then burned to death when her family tried to seek justice, in the latest case of horrific sexual violence to emerge in India.Police have arrested 14 men in connection with the assault and murder in eastern Jharkhand state, but the main suspect is still on the run.The teenager was abducted while her family were away at a wedding on Thursday night and raped in a nearby woodland, a local police officer told Agence France-Presse. When her parents returned and she told them what had happened, the family went to the village council.Community elders have no formal legal standing, but carry huge authority in rural areas where people often use them to settle disputes in preference to a legal system that can be slow, expensive and corrupt.The council ordered two men to do 100 sit-ups and pay a 50,000 (£550) rupee fine, a derisory punishment for a crime that carries a long jail sentence under Indian law. It enraged the men, however, and they responded by attacking the girl’s parents then returning to her home and set her on fire, Ashok Ram, the police officer in charge, said.The chief minister for Jharkhand state, Raghubar Das said he was shocked by the “gruesome” attack and called for a strong response.It was the latest case to highlight India’s problem with sexual violence, under heavy national and international scrutiny since the 2012 death of a young student after she was gang raped on a Delhi bus. Public horror at her ordeal forced the government to bring in tough rape laws, but critics say too little has been done to enforce them or change public attitudes, and the rich and powerful often try to shield themselves from justice.There have been nationwide protests about two cases this year in which men accused of attacks on underage girls tried to exploit links to the ruling BJP party to shield themselves from the law.In January an eight-year-old girl was allegedly held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and murdered with a stone. After her body was discovered, protesters with BJP connections initially tried to block police from filing charges. Two ministers have since resigned over the case.Police have also arrested a BJP member of the Uttar Pradesh state parliament, accused with his brother of raping a 15-year-old girl. The case only came to public attention after the girl tried to burn herself alive and her father died in custody. The family had spent months trying to register a case with the police, without success. Topics India South and Central Asia news

Eight men have appeared in court accused of involvement in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.It is the first hearing in a case that sparked nationwide outrage and criticism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party.Ankur Sharma, a lawyer for the accused, said the men had pleaded not guilty and were willing to take a lie-detector test.Protests have taken place in cities across India during the past few days, with anger fuelled by initial support for the accused by ministers from the BJP. The protests have also focused on another rape incident allegedly involving a BJP lawmaker in the poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh. More rallies demanding action against rapists and violence against women were expected on Monday in the capital and Ahmedabad, the state capital of the prime minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The girl from a nomadic community that roams the forests of Kashmir was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered with a stone in January, police said. According to the charge sheet, the kidnapping, rape and killing of the girl was part of a plan to drive the nomads out of Kathua district in Jammu, the mostly Hindu region of India’s only Muslim majority state. The alleged ringleader, a retired bureaucrat, Sanji Ram, looked after a small Hindu temple where the girl had been held captive and assaulted. Two of the eight on trial were police officers who are accused of being bribed to stifle the investigation. After the hearing on Monday, the judge adjourned the case until 28 April. On Monday, the lawyer representing the family of the victim said she had been threatened with rape and death for taking up her case, and requested for the trial to be held outside Jammu and Kashmir. “I was threatened yesterday that ‘we will not forgive you’. I am going to tell supreme court that I am in danger,” said lawyer Deepika Singh Rawat who has fought for a proper investigation since the girl’s body was found in January. It was only when the charge sheet was finally filed last week, giving details of the crime, that Indians reacted en masse. Two ministers from the BJP, which shares power in Jammu and Kashmir, were forced to resign after being pilloried for joining a rally in support of the accused men. National outrage over the Kathua case has drawn parallels with the massive protests that followed the gang rape and murder of a girl on a Delhi bus in 2012, which forced the then Congress-led government to enact tough new rape laws, including the death penalty. However, activists say crimes of violence against women are often inadequately investigated, and in some cases accused with political connections have been protected. Further incidents of child rape, including one in Surat in Gujurat, were reported over the weekend. On Friday, Modi assured the country that the guilty would not be shielded, but he has been criticised for failing to speak out sooner. Before leaving for an official visit to Europe this week, Modi received a letter from 50 former civil servants criticising the country’s political leadership over its weak response. “The bestiality and the barbarity involved in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old child shows the depths of depravity that we have sunk into,” the letter said. “In post-Independence India, this is our darkest hour and we find the response of our government, the leaders of our political parties inadequate and feeble.” Topics India South and Central Asia Sexual violence Rape and sexual assault news

In the dim classroom, the low lights form a halo around Achyuta Dyansamantra as he strides back and forth before a whiteboard, intoning into the microphone like a preacher.“If you stare at a woman for more than 14 seconds, that can land you in jail,” he tells the audience. Singing to women in public or passing lewd remarks is also banned, he says. “Whether you agree with it or not, the law is the law.”About 100 faces stare back, many scribbling notes, some toying with their phones. These men in grey-blue safari suits are some of more than 100,000 commercial drivers who operate taxis and rickshaws in the teeming Indian capital, Delhi.Since a gang rape and murder five years ago incensed the nation, such “gender sensitisation” classes have become mandatory to renew commercial driving licences in the city.As the anniversary of the death of physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh approaches, advocates for Indian women say these classes are helping to change a patriarchal culture, one that has proved more stubborn to reform than the country’s laws against sexual harassment and assault.One thickly-bearded and turbaned driver has been raising his hand patiently during the class. “Generally, all the rape happens in India and not in foreign countries,” he says when finally called on. “Why is that so?” The man answers himself before Dyansamantra can speak. “In this country, if you want to have sex, you cannot do so – that’s why there is rape,” he says.Dyansamantra frowns. “We will discuss this later on,” he says. (Delhi does have a red-light district, he adds.)The city’s army of rickshaw and taxi drivers pose no particular threat to women. As in other cities, sexual violence in the capital is most frequently committed by men known to their victims. “If drivers were a problem, the Delhi transport system would have come to a stop,” says Rutika Sharma, a social worker who helps run the schemes, developed by the Delhi-based Manas Foundation, a mental health group.But as growing numbers of women venture out to work and simply live their lives, they are coming into more frequent contact with commercial drivers – some from backgrounds where the idea of an independent woman is still relatively new. “We are trying to explain things in 40 minutes or one hour, that they have been seeing for 40 years,” Sharma says.Changing regressive mindsets is the aim of the class. “Clothing is a major argument,” Sharma says. “Some drivers say fashion – what the girls are wearing – is not Indian culture. They say we are copying other countries.” Inevitably, some raise this kind of clothing as a contributing factor to sexual harassment or assault. “We tell them rape cases are increasing with girls aged six months or two years old,” says Dyansamantra. “Or we show them stories of an 82-year-old lady being raped by some man. We ask the drivers: what was she wearing? And they realise – everything is a mindset.”Women drinking is also a big issue, says Sharma, especially in Hauz Khas Village, a south Delhi neighbourhood of bars and restaurants. “If a girl goes to Hauz Khas, she is a not a good girl. It’s a bad place, where a girl cannot go. That is their mindset,” she says.Drivers frequently push back. “They say: you are modern children of Delhi universities, so you can talk like this, but we can’t. We are deep-rooted Indians,” she says. “But we tell them everything is changing. Now your taxi needs an AC. You have good phones. You are sending your own daughters to school, which you didn’t do before. You are giving your children this change, so why don’t you accept it?”Where moral persuasion fails, an appeal to the pocket can be effective. “We tell them 70% of their passengers are women. We run their business,” Sharma says. “So if we won’t come out, how will the drivers earn?”At the end of each class, drivers receive a sticker for their vehicle. “Along with my taxi, I also drive a campaign to end violence against women”, one declares. Another says: “Women’s respect and safety is my honour and duty”.Outside the training centre, Subhash Chander is reclined in the backseat of his rickshaw, smoking a cigarette. “Of course you have to respect women,” he says. “But I’m an old man. Why do I need to attend such a class?” Much has changed in the four decades he has driven rickshaws in Delhi. “When I started, there were few women passengers,” he says. “Now every office has women, and most of them take autos.”It is not a development he welcomes. “Generally, 99% of women behave wrongly,” he says. “They are having mobiles and all these things. They don’t know how to talk to elders.”Another driver, Kanak Mandol, arrived in Delhi a year ago from a village in Bihar state. “What they are teaching is right,” he says of the classes. “But the passengers are wrong.” The day before, a young couple he was driving pulled the leather curtain of his rickshaw down and began to kiss in the backseat. “The girls and boys we pick up do mischief,” Mandol, 24, says. “If they did that in my village they’d break their legs.”Mohammad Sajjid is more sanguine about how women in Delhi compare with those in his village in western Uttar Pradesh state. “Here women are educated, they take up the whole rickshaw,” he says. “They pay independently.” That is good for business. “Without women, how will we make money?” I find [the classes] very good. I am involved in religion, so I agree with what they say.”A report from Human Rights Watch this month found Indian laws for protecting women had significantly improved in the last five years. Degrading “two-finger” tests – in which doctors insert their hands into women’s vaginas to determine a woman’s virginity – were outlawed in 2013. Offences such as stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment are now included in the Indian penal code.What holds back progress is attitudes: too often, especially outside big cities, the implementation of the new laws is stymied by judges, police and village leaders, the report said.Changing behaviour is harder than amending the law, says Swati Maliwal, the Delhi commissioner for women. But it is possible, she says. “It is about systems and deterrence and changing mindsets.”As an example, she points to another form of transport, the Delhi metro, a strikingly clean and efficient system in a city renowned for dirt and chaos. “People come from all over to use [the metro],” she says. “Villagers, city dwellers, and people of all classes. But they behave themselves and keep it clean and follow the rules.”Dyansamantra and his colleagues at the Manas Foundation know the daily struggle involving in changing mindsets. But he insists they are making progress. “Yesterday one driver told me that girls shouldn’t laugh loudly in India. They shouldn’t show their teeth,” he says.“And the other drivers shouted at him. ‘What kind of nonsense are you telling people?’ they said. When I talked to him afterwards, he said, ‘I think I was wrong, please forgive me.’ The drivers are starting to listen. They’re hearing and countering each other. That’s the best thing.”The instructors are learning too. Sharma smiles as she recalls the advice an older driver gave her in a recent class. “Daughter, you are trying to light small lamps,” he said. “In this class of 100 people, some are sleeping, some are saying India is modernising and forgetting its culture and these girls are wild. But if in this class of 100 people, 15 or 20 will try to understand what you’re talking about, then 15 or 20 lamps will light. If you reach 20 people in a class of 100, there will be change.” Topics India Observer dispatch Delhi Rape and sexual assault Gender news

Jyoti Singh stood by the side of the road, wrapped up from the chill of a Delhi winter evening, looking out for the headlights of a bus. It was about 9.30pm and she was on her way home from watching Life of Pi at the cinema in the Citywalk mall with a young male friend, Awindra Pandey.The date was 16 December 2012. She was 23 years old, a young woman making her way in the world, working nights in an IBM call centre to put herself through medical college to achieve her dream of becoming a physiotherapist. She had less than two weeks left to live.A white bus was approaching, one of the many private vehicles plying the streets of the city. The conductor was calling their destination – Dwarka – so they handed over their money and stepped on board. There were five other passengers, all young men. The doors closed behind them. And the trap was sprung.What happened to Jyoti Singh over the best part of an hour physically sickens everyone who has been obliged to listen to the details. The men took it in turns to rape her and then they used an iron bar on her. They beat Awindra and threw the couple out, half-naked, into the night. The police found them by the side of the road at about 11pm. It was clear that Jyoti had suffered catastrophic injuries.We know all this because Jyoti did not die there at the roadside. She clung on, because she was determined to tell the police enough to catch the men who had violated her.“I want to survive,” she wrote on a piece of paper she handed to her doctors.It is five years later. A bus pulls up to the Munirka stop where Jyoti and Awindra waited that night.The doors open, 10 rupees change hands and the bus noses back into the traffic. The darkness outside is full of the smoke from wood fires that hangs in the cold air. There are neon signs and the lights of cars and lorries and the cacophony of horns. These are the last sights and sounds Jyoti would have heard before the men closed in on her.Tonight, the bus is almost empty, just as it was when the doors shut behind Jyoti and Awindra.“The conductor closed the doors of the bus. He closed the lights of the bus and came towards my friend and started abusing and beating him,” Jyoti told the police as she lay in her hospital bed.“They held his hands and held me and took me to the back of the bus. They tore my clothes and raped me in turns. They hit me with an iron rod and bit me on my entire body with their teeth.“They took all belongings, my mobile phone, purse, credit card, debit card, watches etc. Six people raped me in turns for nearly one hour in a moving bus. The driver of the bus kept changing so that he could also rape me.”Tonight, the handful of people who have got on the bus have now departed. The driver turns off most of the lights. Alone, in the semi-darkness, there is that sense of vulnerability familiar to any young women brave enough to travel at night in a city where, even five years after the promises that lessons would be learned, many feel that beneath the surface, little has changed.But on the surface, in the bright light of day, life for young Indian women growing up in 2017 looks very different to the way it was for their mothers and a world away from that of their grandmothers.They wear jeans and T-shirts, hang out in coffee shops, obsess over their mobile phones and mingle with boys just like their western counterparts do and in a way that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.“Gender sensitisation” is the new phrase: trying to change deeply ingrained attitudes about male and female roles. Taxi drivers get lessons in why they cannot leer at their passengers. Two years ago, the country’s first all-woman police station opened in Gurgaon, just outside Delhi. There is even a campaign for compulsory gender sensitisation programmes in all of India’s schools to try to catch them young.There is a lively feminist movement, hotly debating issues such as the continuing stigma attached to menstruation – by women as well as men. There have been milestone victories, including the supreme court’s decision to rule as unconstitutional the “triple talaq” practice, which allows a man to divorce his wife by saying “divorce” three times.Yet it is an uphill battle: many men brought up seeing their mothers doing all the household chores expect the same of their wives. Daughters, especially those in poorer families, are widely expected to perform the household chores while the boys are not. It is worse in the rural areas, where traditional attitudes prevail and there are still widely held beliefs that girls who go out to bars and drink with boys are not decent Indian girls but westernised and sexually permissive.That mindset was at work on the night of Jyoti’s last bus ride. The men who fell upon her had no respect for her as a person: to them, she was simply an object to do with as they wanted.“I heard these people saying, ‘Catch them, tear their clothes, hit them, take her bag’ and using abusive language,” Jyoti told the police. “Ram Singh, Thakkur, Raju, Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay etc were their names. We were all the time in total darkness…“Half of the time I was unconscious, but whenever I came to consciousness they beat me up. My friend tried to save me but these people beat him every time he came forward to save me. They also beat him with an iron rod and hit him in the head.“They removed all the clothes of my friend and they thought we had both died. They threw us out of the moving bus. We were both naked on the side of the road and many passersby actually saw us and informed the police control room.”Outside the hospital, the city was ablaze with anger. The initial reports of the rape and the sheer savagery had brought women out on to the streets. The police responded by beating them. The anger grew and spread.Eventually, on 26 December, the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his cabinet took the extraordinary decision to fly Jyoti to a transplant specialist hospital in Singapore. Cynics suggested the real reason was that no one wanted her to die in an Indian hospital that would become the focal point for more violent protests.Her family went with her to Singapore, but her strength was gone. On the evening of 28 December, the doctors told them there was nothing more to be done. They sat with her as her heartbeat faded. At 4.45am on 29 December, it finally stopped and Jyoti Singh’s fight was over.Jyoti’s parents, Asha Devi and Badrinath Singh, had sacrificed everything to give their children the chance of a better life. They lived in a small house down a blind alley in the Mahavir Enclave II area in the south-west of the city, a poor area of slum dwellings. They had sold their little plot of farmland in their home state of Uttar Pradesh to pay for their three children – Jyoti and her younger brothers Gaurav and Saurabh – to study and make something of themselves. Asha was 46, Badrinath 53. He was working double shifts as a baggage handler at the airport to pay the bills.The day of the attack, 16 December 2012, was a Sunday. Jyoti had made tea for the family and gone off to meet Awindra. When she failed to return, the family started calling her phone but each time it was switched off. At 11.15pm, the police called to say that there had been an accident. Badrinath went to the hospital and called the others to join him at 2am. Even then, the surgeons had little hope: the iron bar had torn out most of her intestines.A thick blanket of smog covers the city. The family moved to a new two-bed apartment in Dwarka in 2013. The area is not far from their old home, but smarter and on the up; earlier this year, the government chose it as a new diplomatic area for foreign embassies.The couple were given the flat by the government as part of a compensation package – it’s an improvement on their previous home but still one of the cheapest types of housing in the city. They greet visitors in one of the bedrooms. There is a single bed placed on one side of the room and on the other, four plastic chairs and a small tea table.A large poster on one wall shows the burning flame of a candle against a black background, the symbol for the women’s welfare trust they have formed in the name of their daughter – the Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust.Nirbhaya – the Hindi word for fearless – is the name by which Jyoti came to be known because Indian law initially prevented the publication of her identity. The authorities, anxious to avoid the creation of a martyr, were quick to threaten publications with section 228a of the Indian penal code and the possibility of two years in jail for identifying a rape victim. However, the code also contains a clause permitting the next of kin to give written consent and after Jyoti’s family consented to her name being published, it started to be used more often. They continue to refuse to give permission for her photograph to be used.A glass cabinet on another wall displays the mementoes and certificates they have been given for their tireless campaigning. It includes a photograph of Asha with the prime minister, Narendra Modi.Asha fiddles with her mobile phone. She is angry still, angry that the men who were convicted of the rape and murder of her daughter have still not hanged, angry that the youngest member of the gang, who was tried separately as a juvenile, was released from prison after serving his three-year sentence, angry that nothing has really changed.“I disclosed the name of my daughter, Jyoti Singh. She was a victim. She did not commit any crime. Why should we suppress her details? They, who gang-raped and murdered her, should hide their names for committing that brutal act,” she says.“I cannot have peaceful sleep at night. I cannot explain how difficult it is to accept that those who gang-raped and murdered my daughter so brutally are still alive. I fight with myself every day. The question comes every time to mind: what was Jyoti’s fault? What did she do? I have no answer. We are still waiting for justice.”Her eyes fill with tears. No one can really appreciate their pain, she says.“I lost my daughter. I know she will never come back again. But the work I am doing in her memory will save a lot of daughters from brutal rapes in India. I will continue to raise my voice against rapes while I am alive, whether I have people on my side or not.”The trust is trying to work with rape victims in Delhi. “I feel good when I voice protest against rapes. It gives me a sense of satisfaction,” says Asha.But she doesn’t feel good about what has happened since 2012.“[At first] there was a huge public outcry to change the system as far as the issue of women safety was concerned. But there has hardly been any change that has taken place.“Five years have gone. These five years have been really difficult for us. We suffered a lot. Our emotional pain was enormous. Everyday girls are being raped and targeted for sexual assault, be it in Delhi or other states across the country.”She does not understand why the men whose death sentences were upheld by the supreme court on 5 May this year have still not been executed.“What is the benefit of the law if it takes so long to punish perpetrators in connection with such heinous crimes. Justice delayed is justice denied. We all know that,” she says.“We are always ready to point fingers at girls. We never ask questions to our boys. If any rape takes place, we immediately raise questions about the behaviour of the victim, like: why did she step out so late at night? What was she doing so late outside? Why was she skimpily clad, etc.”There are tears pouring down her face, tears of sadness and rage.“It has been five years now since we lost our daughter, but still we are suffering that pain and dying a slow death every day. We are waiting for the justice. There would be thousands of such parents like us waiting for justice in our country.”Better law, faster justice, stiffer penalties: that’s what she wants. But more than anything, she wants attitudes to change.Even as the angry protesters took to the streets five years ago, other voices in Indian society, male voices in general, were taking to the airwaves to claim that Jyoti was the author of her own misfortune.“Can one hand clap? I don’t think so,” religious leader Asaram Bapu told his followers.Then the president’s son, Abhijit Mukherjee, weighed in, attacking the women who were protesting.“It is becoming fashionable to land up on the streets with candle in hand. Such people are completely disconnected from reality. They go to discotheques. I am very well versed with student activism and I can bet on it that most of the protesters are not students. They are chasing two minutes of fame.”Asha says that if change is to come, it must come from the top, from those who should be setting an example.“In our families, when our daughters come home late after work we ask them so many questions. But for boys it is absolutely normal. We are absolutely fine if they come home late at night. This mindset has to be changed.“Parents actually create these male-female divides at home. I believe it is the responsibility of all parents to give equal attention to their children, irrespective of boys and girls, and give them proper education. Then only we can fight out the crisis in our society.”She gets up, offers tea. She doesn’t want to talk about her sons: they have their own lives and must move on, she says. Badrinath is getting ready for work in the cargo section at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport. While Asha is animated, he seems subdued and depressed about the lack of progress.“The journey has been really painful for us. If you ask me if there has been any change in the system, I would say no with a capital N,” he says.“I don’t see any significant change. When the incident had taken place, the then government did take some steps to amend the law. But that government completed its term and a new government came in as people voted for a change.“But the crime graph never stopped. It continued to grow day by day. The situation has worsened to such an extent that nowadays girl children are being raped in various parts of our country.”Politicians don’t care, he says. “It is unfortunate that for our government, rape is not a grave issue. They think these are trivial matters,” he says.“When we reach out to people and knock on their doors asking when the death penalty would be executed, they try to convince us, saying that all four perpetrators are dying a slow death behind bars. But who will understand how my wife and I are dying a gradual death every day? And we have no one to share that pain.”For the rich, able to live in gated colonies and be chauffeured everywhere, the issue seems far removed from their experiences. They don’t have to negotiate the city’s dangerous streets alone at night.“The saddest part is such incidents of rape only happen with our daughters. These kinds of incidents don’t happen with big people or with ministers’ daughters. Then they would understand the pain we commoners bear when brutal gang-rape murders happen with our daughters or sisters. So, we know where we live.”The murder changed their lives, he says, but he still believes that they can use it to change the lives of other young women for the better.“I know my daughter will never come back. But this fight is not for us or our family. It is for many other Jyoti Singhs who are also like my daughter and suffered similar mishaps in life. This fight is to ensure safety for them.”Yet still the legal process grinds on. The supreme court is due to hear a challenge to its May ruling on the death sentences on 12 December.There are four men on death row: Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta.Ram Singh, the driver, never made it to trial. He was found hanged from the grille in the ceiling in his prison cell, a remarkable feat given that the ceiling was 8ft high and he had nothing to stand on to reach it. His family suspect foul play.“Let’s go and have some fun today,” he is said to have told the others before they set out that night.“Ram Singh was the first one to rape the girl,” the youngest member of the gang told police. “The girl kept screaming and howling but, in the moving bus, everybody raped her one by one. And they bit the girl on different parts of her body.”The Delhi Commission for Women has sent notices to Tihar jail, where the men are being held, and to the deputy commissioner of police, asking why the executions have not been carried out.Swati Maliwal, the DCW chair, recalls the huge upsurge of anger that spread out across the country in the days after the attack and the brutality of the police’s response, hitting women with their lathis – wooden or bamboo sticks often tipped with iron.“Everybody was out on streets. I remember I was myself lathi-charged. All of us were demanding a system that there should be no rape in the capital,” she says.Summoned to parliament to explain what the government was doing to protect women, the then home minister promised to set up a special task force intended to meet twice a month. In its first three years, it met just 12 times.And it was going round in circles. When she started attending the meetings and asking questions, the task force was disbanded.“It was in 2016. It was really shocking to me,” she says.She was told the task force had completed its work and the lieutenant governor of Delhi would set up a new one. She had to go to court to get it to happen.Women struggle to get justice, she says. She had to threaten the police commissioner with an arrest warrant if he did not hand over the figures for crimes against women.When she did get her hands on the figures, they showed that between 2012 and 2014 there were 31,446 cases of crimes against women in the capital and 150 convictions. No wonder women are scared to walk the street, she says.“A one-and-a-half-year-old girl was raped just five days back. Then a seven-year-old girl was gang-raped two days back in the capital,” she says. Both girls needed operations as a result of the attacks.“I went and met the girl. It is really very difficult to describe. And I really could not come back home that night. I was so upset. The entire night I spent there with her.”The government has to act, she says.“We need a proper system to function, particularly in these cases of child rapes. Should a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, for the next 15 years, tell everybody that she was raped and demand punishment for that person? Is that the civilised society we want?“So, we need to create a mechanism that in six months, at least in the cases of child rapes, the death penalty should be given to the rapists. And for this you need to create a mechanism. You need better numbers of police resources.“You need better police accountability, better forensics, more courts. And you need a committee to really get the political will together. The committee cannot be on the level of the bureaucracy.“We have done such things before, but it never worked. We are trying to wake up this completely apathetic system.”Despite everything, there has been some progress. In January 2013, a three-member commission, spearheaded by a former chief justice of India, published its review of laws pertaining to sexual crimes. The committee, set up in response to the protests and given just 30 days to complete its work, identified “failure of governance” as the root cause for sexual crime. It criticised the government, the police and even the public for their apathy and recommended dramatic changes, including obliging the police to record all rape allegations. Parliament obliged with new legislation that, among the introduction of several new sexual offences including stalking, provided for compulsory jail sentences for officials who failed to register rape complaints.It may sound extraordinary in 2017 that the police needed to be told to take rape seriously, but they did. There were regular reports of rape victims being thrown out of stations, ignored and browbeaten for having the temerity to bother the police.So now it is easier for women to report rapes. The DCW has a helpline that has taken 316,000 calls and the number of reports has increased as women gain confidence that they may be taken seriously.Yet still some women who report rape are being subjected to the notorious “two-finger” test: two fingers inserted into the vagina, to establish its elasticity and to assess whether the victim is “habituated” to sex. This is despite the supreme court ruling in 2013 that someone who enjoyed sex regularly could not be presumed to have consented in rape cases.Only last month, a teenager was turned away from three police stations in Bhopal when she tried to report a rape. She was only taken seriously when her parents – both police officers – got involved.Last month, too, Human Rights Watch published an 82-page report citing the difficulties faced by women and girls in reporting sexual assault.There is so much further to go, says Maliwal.“I am also a citizen of Delhi. I am a girl. Do I feel safe when I walk at night? No I don’t and neither does any girl who is walking on the streets in Delhi. That is what we have to change. Though we have achieved so much, we have put in our effort, there is this complete apathy in the system.”Campaigner Yogita Bhayana has been helping Jyoti’s family for the past five years. Like Maliwal, she was on the receiving end of police violence for joining the 2012 protests. But for a while, she thought it might be a turning point.“We all saw the rage and were beaten up by the police. There was some kind of silver lining that we were seeing at that time,” she says.“We were hopeful that things might change for betterment. So, we just took it like that. One year passed, two years passed, three years passed… I think we get to hear more cases. Instead of being eradicated, the incidents of rapes were increasing every day. The saddest part is that there is nothing done on prevention.“Nobody talks about it. Has anybody come forward and asked what happened after Nirbhaya? Has the scenario of women safety improved in Delhi? People are not bothered about it.”She is scathing about what she regards as multiple government failures.“Everybody is in denial mode. They are just not ready to acknowledge the problem. First of all, they have to acknowledge the issue and then address it.“If you look at the records, all these crimes are done mostly by juveniles. There lies the problem. We have to address the problem from there. I believe if you have the right value system early enough, we can prevent crimes against women.”Even the words used to refer to sexual harassment of women – “eve-teasing”, so-called as a reference to Eve’s role in the biblical fall of man, implying that the victim is responsible for provoking the harassment – demonstrate the mountain to climb.That’s the attitude the police take, says Bhayana. “If you go to the police station or court with a complaint of eve-teasing, they will just throw you out, saying it is a petty issue,” she says. “People are also not sensitive enough to understand that eve-teasers are potential rapists. There is a typical mindset issue here also. In most of the cases, people just don’t understand the gravity of the issue.”Outside Jyoti’s parents’ apartment, the smog has worsened. Asha stands on the balcony, looks out at the city and contemplates what has changed in the past five years. The best thing is that women are starting to report rapes to the police, she says.“There is an awareness now. Earlier, women used to hide such cases owing to social pressure and they never used to report to the local administration. That area has undergone a significant change.”The young are trying to tackle the issue, she says, but still more needs to be done.“It is true that the law was amended, but the approach still remains the same. If we don’t change our mindset and the approach of our system, we cannot reduce crime against women in India.”They always treated their daughter and their sons the same, says Badrinath. Only when everyone does the same will change come. But at least people are starting to understand that change is possible.“When we started the fight, we were alone. Now we have many people by our side,” he says.Back on the bus trundling through the night towards Dwarka, a couple more passengers get on. Like every other passenger tonight, they are men.Five years after Jyoti Singh’s death shocked the nation and the world, most young women feel it is still too dangerous to venture out alone on to the streets of their city at night. Topics Rape and sexual assault The Observer India Delhi South and Central Asia features

Two B.J.P. ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir state government who had participated in the protests resigned on Friday under widespread criticism, facing accusations of obstructing justice and fanning religious divisions.One of them, Choudhary Lal Singh, denied that he had quit under pressure from the B.J.P. “I did it because there was pressure from the country,” he said.India’s ruling party seems to have failed to learn the painful political lessons from the 2012 rape. At the time, the Indian National Congress, now the leading opposition party, was in power, and it was severely criticized for its slow and tone-deaf reaction.Those same criticisms are now being leveled against Mr. Modi and his party.The Supreme Court has issued an order to the lawyers involved in the protests to explain why they physically blocked police officials from entering the courthouse. The lawyers have said they were stirred to action by a right-wing Hindu group that is pushing for the investigation to be taken out of the hands of the state police, which they say has a pro-Muslim bias, and given to a national crime bureau they say is more neutral.This latest rape case is rapidly becoming another low point between India’s Hindus and Muslims; politicians have often stirred the two communities against each other, with fatal consequences. The victim was Muslim, all eight men arrested were Hindus and some of the investigators are Muslim. On the other side of the gulf, Muslims generally distrust the governing party and its Hindu nationalist philosophy.And this is not the only big rape case the governing party has to deal with right now.A powerful governing-party lawmaker in the Uttar Pradesh State Assembly has been accused of raping a teenage girl and then conspiring with his brother to help kill the girl’s father after the family complained.

This week, a mob of Hindu lawyers physically blocked police officers from entering a courthouse to file charges against the men. The officers retreated to a judge’s house later in the evening to complete the paperwork.ImageAsifa BanoProtests and counterprotests are now spreading. On Wednesday, much of Kathua, a small town in northern India near where Asifa was killed, was shut down by demonstrators, including dozens of Hindu women who helped block a highway and organize a hunger strike.“They are against our religion,’’ said Bimla Devi, one of the protesters. If the accused men aren’t released, she said, “we will burn ourselves.’’Police officials say they have physical evidence and DNA tests linking the defendants to Asifa’s death. They also say they have interviewed more than 130 witnesses, who “unequivocally corroborated the facts that emerged.’’Several prominent members of India’s dominant political force, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, are pushing to have the case taken out of the hands of the state police, arguing that the Central Bureau of Investigation would be a better, more neutral agency to handle it. Many suspect this is an attempt to win leniency for the accused, noting that the bureau is an arm of the central government, which the Bharatiya Janata Party controls.That a Hindu temple is at the center of the crime makes this case even more combustible. The police say that Sanji Ram, the temple’s custodian, devised the plan as a way to terrorize the Bakarwals, and that he enlisted a nephew and some friends to kidnap and kill Asifa. The police say the culprits selected Asifa simply because she was by herself and “a soft target.”For generations, Bakarwal nomads, who drift with their herds across the plains and hills of northern India, have leased pastures from Hindu farmers for their animals to graze in winter. But in recent years, some Hindus in the Kathua area have begun a campaign of abuse against the nomads. Villagers said Mr. Ram was their ringleader. “His poison has been spreading,’’ said Talib Hussain, a Bakarwal leader. “When I was young, I remember the fear Sanji Ram’s name invoked in Muslim women. If they wanted to scare each other, they would take Sanji Ram’s name, since he was known to misbehave with Bakarwal women.’’

Enlarge this image Men walk near the site where the body of an 8-year-old girl who was raped and murdered was found in January. Channi Anand/AP hide caption toggle caption Channi Anand/AP Men walk near the site where the body of an 8-year-old girl who was raped and murdered was found in January. Channi Anand/AP On May 2, two girls, ages 10 and 12, appeared in court to testify against a man they said had raped them repeatedly at an orphanage in the Indian city of Hyderabad.They had been rescued by the police and were sent to live in a shelter run by Prajwala, an organization that has supported rape victims in India since 1996, giving them a place to live on its campus and the skills to help them rebuild their lives.Now seeking justice, the young girls waited in court an entire day only to learn that their case had been adjourned — for the third time.Lawyers and activists working with child abuse victims say these kinds of delays are common in India's overworked judicial system.India is trying to makes its judicial system more efficient — and to set stronger penalties for convicted rapists. New laws have been passed. But there are concerns that these ordinances will be difficult to implement or could even backfire.The kind of delay the two girls faced simply should not happen. A law called POCSO — the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act — calls for the establishment of new child-friendly courts and better procedures in existing courts so young victims wouldn't have to make numerous appearances in order to testify. The act came into effect in 2012.The aim of POCSO was to offer better protection for all women — in particular for minors. According to statistics from India's National Crime Records Bureau, four out of 10 rape victims are minors. In 2016, only 6,626 — nearly a tenth of its 64,138 pending cases of child rape went to trial. Of those that did, the conviction rate was only 28.2 percent.But, as in the case of the young girls from Prajwala, adjournments are still very prevalent, says Krishnan. This year, in the wake of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl, there is a growing public effort to call for stiffer laws and severe punishments. And more changes are afoot.On April 21, Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to public pressure for tougher rape laws and passed an ordinance to amend the POCSO law.One major revision is that anyone convicted of raping a child 12 or younger could get the death penalty. In the case of a rape of a minor below the age of 16, the punishment is now a 20-year sentence or life imprisonment, compared with a 10-year maximum sentence before.In addition, the prime minister's new ordinance calls for fast-tracking all rape trials so there would be a judgment in six months — a time frame that activists believe is rather ambitious given the sheer number of cases pending in court. Despite the seeming progress, activists raise a number of concerns.Death penalty debateIn many of the cases involving sexual offenses against minors, Karuna Nundy, a lawyer who tries cases in India's Supreme Court, says the rapist is often a known assailant — in some cases, even a close relative.According to the 2016 NCRB data, in 94.8 percent of the rape cases, the rapists were not strangers. They were friends, neighbors, people who were known to the children."By instituting the death penalty, the reporting of such crimes may decline," says Nundy. A day after the ordinance was passed, Bharti Ali, the co-director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, a Delhi-based nongovernmental organization, contended with one such case: "I was dealing with a woman who would soon testify against her husband. He was under trial for raping their minor daughter."The woman, she says, was worried about whether the death penalty would come into effect. While she wanted her husband punished, she didn't want him to be put to death."It isn't easy for victims to get past the social stigma and report rape in India," says Ali. "When they do report it, the [prospect of the] death penalty shouldn't cause them to reconsider. The death penalty can also induce a rapist to kill his victim, because he would not want his victim to testify against him in court."Fast-tracking could be slow goingThe new amendment has proposed fast-tracking of rape cases. But India does not have the infrastructure to make this an easy fix, say judicial observers."We still have very few courts dedicated exclusively for child victims of sexual assault," says Sunitha Krishnan, who co-founded Prajwala and who was raped when she was 15 years old. "In most cities, courts only have designated times for children to testify."As a result, cases can back up, creating further delays. "Investing in and creating this infrastructure should be the priority," says Krishnan. "Unless we recruit and train judicial officers and redress issues pertaining to the shortage of judicial officers, nothing will change." Then there is the matter of evidence. Convictions in rape cases hinge on DNA evidence from forensic scientific labs. There are only six of these labs in all of India, and only three are equipped for DNA testing. Thousands of cases are still pending at these labs across the country. "In such a situation, the victim would have to wait at least two years to get the report, making it impossible to fast track their cases," says Bharti Ali.A registry proposalOn the same day he amended the law, Modi also announced the government's intention to set up a national sex offender registry to register and track rapists. This proposal is being hotly debated in India. While activists like Krishnan feel that it will help monitor sexual offenders and prevent crime, Ali is a critic: "Once you brand someone a rapist, it can prevent them from ever wanting to reform or reintegrate into society," she says.Meanwhile, the two young girls at Prajwala, like thousands of others across the country, are still waiting for justice. Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, India. Her work has appeared in The International New York Times, BBC Travel and Forbes India. You can follow her @kamal_t.

Some five years after a gang rape incident roiled India, the country is in the throes of another bout of outrage—this time over the violation and murder of a young girl in the Kathua region of the restive Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) state.On January 10, an eight-year-old Muslim girl, part of the nomadic Bakerwal tribe, was abducted while she was out grazing her family’s horses. Her body was found in the forest a week later. It emerged that six men, all Hindus, had reportedly conspired to drug, rape, and eventually murder her. Their alleged intention was to scare the Bakerwals out of the area. The brutal crime plays into the deep and long-running religious conflict in J&K.It’s hard to pick what’s most sickening, the crime itself or the nature of support the alleged perpetrators have received. While many Indians have taken to the streets, Facebook, and Twitter to express shock, grief, and fury over the situation, not everyone is on the same page.Back in February, over 5,000 people affiliated to a local Hindu nationalist group marched, waving the Indian Tricolour, to protest the arrest of special police officer Deepak Khajuria. The protesters claimed that Khajuria, one of the accused in the case, had been framed. They were joined by ministers in the J&K government, who are also members of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).The case has sparked some incredibly depraved responses on social media, too.Since then, the backers of the accused have been seen and heard invoking religion and nationalism, raising slogans like Bharat mata ki jai (Hail Mother India) and Jai Shri Ram (Hail Ram). To add to the noxious atmosphere, even a section of lawyers in the deeply polarised state has vociferously come out in support of the accused—last week, they tried to stop the police from filing charges in a local court.The details in the chargesheet, meanwhile, are unimaginably horrifying, all the more so since the scene of crime was a temple and the accused include police officers.The case has sparked some incredibly depraved responses on social media, too. Some have virtually celebrated the girl’s killing. In often abusive, expletive-laden posts, they say it was good that the young Muslim was killed. One such banker in the southern state of Kerala was sacked because of the sheer vileness of his social media comments following the murder. Another such post is simply unfit to be literally translated from Hindi.Of course, these don’t discount the hundreds of genuine expressions of outrage and support for the girl and her family. There have been midnight marches and outpourings of grief from influential as well as ordinary citizens.In Kerala and Allahabad, some houses now reportedly sport signs asking BJP members to keep away as young girls live inside. A new father in Kerala made an even stronger statement, naming his daughter after the murdered child—he was promptly attacked for his decision. The outrage has now even prompted the United Nations to take note.But it’s clear that as primitive undercurrents increasingly shape political and social life in India, an innocent child has been tragically caught in the crossfire.We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

A teenage girl in India has been raped and burned alive by her attacker - the third instance of such an attack in the same week.The 16-year-old girl died after being soaked in fuel and set on fire at her home in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh.Police said she was killed after telling her attacker she would inform her family about the rape.Two other similar attacks, one fatal, took place in Jharkhand this week.A 17-year-old girl remains in critical condition after being set on fire by a suspect who allegedly said he wanted to marry the victim, but had been rejected.The earlier case involved a 16-year-old who was burned alive after her parents complained to village elders about her rape. The accused had been ordered to do sit-ups and pay a fine as punishment, prompting them to beat the girl's parents and kill her.In the most recent attack, the victim was at home alone in Jujharpur village when she was attacked. Police said they had arrested a suspect, named as 28-year-old Ravi Chadhar.India is facing renewed public outrage over the number of violent sexual assaults in the country.BBC India correspondent Soutik Biswas recently wrote that "rape is increasingly used as an instrument to assert power and intimidate the powerless in India".Why India's rape crisis shows no signs of abatingRecent public anger over sexual assaults was sparked by the rape and murder of an eight-year old girl in January.The girl, a member of a Muslim nomadic tribe, was found dead in Indian-administered Kashmir. Eight Hindu men were arrested, and there was an outcry when two ministers from the Hindu BJP party attended a rally in support of the accused. In April, Hindu right-wing groups staged protests over the arrests.Another BJP politician has also been accused of raping a 16-year-old girl - a charge he denies. Public outrage over sexual violence in India rose dramatically after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.Four of the accused were given a death sentence, recently upheld on appeal, and the case led to new anti-rape laws.