Rape in India is no news. It's like news about sunrise from the East.
US numbers or worse, look it up. Shameful on both counts - Indian and American.
BTW Pakistan is much much worse but most rapes are simply not counted because of their strange law. The victim has to prove rape with a higher burden and so most don't even bother reporting it.
No Witnesses? No Rape, Says Pakistan’s Islamic Council · Global Voices
No Witnesses? No Rape, Says Pakistan's Islamic Council
Posted
12 June 2013 20:26 GMT
A ruling by Pakistan's
Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) dismissing
DNA as primary evidence in rape cases has
received much flak from activists in the country. The ruling has its fair share of supporters though, with some happy that there is a legitimate institution pondering religious issues in Pakistan.
The Council
does not have any legislative power in the country, it is an advisory body for the Pakistani government and the Parliament on all legal matters related to Islam. Rape is currently tried
under civil law in Pakistan which allows for DNA evidence. Following the ruling, the Sindh assembly unanimously passed a resolution on June 11, 2013 making
DNA tests mandatory in all rape cases in the province.
The
controversial edict [ur] made public on
the council's website, stipulates that Islam has given clear instructions on how to judge and punish rapists, by relying solely on testimony from four witnesses and that DNA could be only used to supplement that primary testimony.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a leading rights organization in the country
called the council's pronouncement ‘regressive, exceptionally insensitive and unkind to rape victims’ on its own website:
Poor investigation methods and reluctance of witnesses to come forward out of fear mean that the balance is titled in the favour of the rapist as it is. In these circumstances, it would be foolish to not depend on all the evidence that is available, especially something as incontrovertible as DNA test results.
Victims of rape along with relatives, hold a protest against their alleged culprits to demand their arrest. Hyderabad, Pakistan. Image by Rajput Yasir. Copyright Demotix. 14th November 2011.
In Pakistan, rape used to be tried under Islamic Sharia or the controversial Hudood laws,
which in practice equated the crime of adultery with rape – if a rape victim could not provide four male eyewitnesses to the crime, she could be charged with adultery. In fact, according to Pakistan's
National Commission on Status of Women “
80% of women” in jail in 2003 were there as because “they had failed to prove rape charges and were consequently convicted of adultery.”
But in 2006, the
Women's Protection Bill was passed which amended the Hudood laws, bringing rape cases under civil law, which allows for forensic evidence.
Pakistani Rape Laws Islamic or Un-Islamic? - The Muslim ObserverThe Muslim Observer
in Pakistan and in some other Muslim countries that have experienced the legacy of British rule, a woman is considered guilty UNLESS she can provide four male witnesses to prove that she is innocent!
A series of events in the past few weeks have again highlighted the injustices being committed against women in the name of Islam in Pakistan,†writes Haider. “Recently, the three accused of raping an 18-year old woman at Jinnah’s Mausoleum were set free by a court in Karachi. The court refused to entertain the DNA evidence, which reportedly proved the guilt of the accused, and gave the accused the benefit of the doubt because the victim could not produce four eyewitnesses to the rape. Weeks later, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decreed that the DNA evidence in the absence of four righteous men as witnesses to rape is not sufficient for conviction under Islamic law.â€
So women simply do not report rape in Pakistan