Bombay High Court upholds death sentence for Sangli rapist

Posted On Saturday, March 09, 2013 , Mumbai Mirror

The Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the death sentence awarded to a 22-year-old for raping and killing a 9-yearold girl.

“The accused is a menace to society and will continue to be so, and there is no possibility of him being reformed,” the division bench of Justice P V Hardas and Justice A M Thipsay observed while pronouncing the verdict on Friday.

Raju Paswan, originally from Muzzapur in Bihar, was convicted by an additional sessions judge in Sangli in November last year.

The high court upheld the verdict of the lower court, which said the crime was premeditated, and not committed on impulse.

The court also observed he chose a girl of that age as she could be overpowered easily.

“The victim, by virtue of her age, was in a situation where she could have offered little or no resistance at all. The accused has committed an offence of rape on a defenceless child, which is the ultimate insult to womanhood. The entire gory and grisly incident had shocked the collective conscience of the village,” observed the high court.

The court also rejected advocate Niteen Pradhan’s plea for mercy on account of Paswan’s age. The bench noted that an accused who has shown remorse and genuine regret at having committed an offence is someone who can be reformed.

It added, “An offender who remains a nonchalant offender throughout and does not show any regret or repentance at having committed the offence, cannot be said to be aperson who can be reformed.”

Rejecting all the contentions raised against the prosecution’s case, the court accepted all the arguments made by chief public prosecutor Revati Mohite Dere.

The incident dates back to June 21, 2010, when the victim went missing from her home in Bedag village, Sangli district. Her father, a farm labourer, lodged a missing person complaint.

During their investigation the police learnt that the victim was last seen with Paswan, who used to live in the neighbouring house.

One of the main witnesses in the case was a 10-year-old child who, while playing with his friends, had seen Paswan dragging the girl to a secluded place.

 

 

Maharashtra Displaced families stage state-wide Dharna against Koyna Dam

Mumbai, Feb 10, 2013, DHNS:

Thousands of dam evictees and project-affected people (PAP) continued their round-the-clock picketing, called Tiyya Andolan, in the interiors of seven districts of Maharashtra demanding the implementation of their long-pending demands.

The protests have been going on since last Monday, in Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur, Aurangabad, Raigad and Pune.

Speaking to Deccan Herald from Satara where dharna is going on against the Koyna dam, Jagannath Vibhute of Shramik Mukti Dal (SMD) which is spearheading the state-wide Tiyya Andolan, said: “The state government has sent a message after six days that they will take up the issue of displaced families, people and PAP in the Cabinet meeting to be held this week.

Take for example in Satara where nearly 27,000 families have gathered in Koyna Nagar, around the Koyna Dam, the first major man-made reservoir in post-independence Mahrashtra. Thousands of families were displaced in 1960 and several thousands continue to remain in rootless condition.

They have no place to go. They have become homeless in their own homeland.”
Giving details of other places where the picketing is going on simultaneously, Vibhute said on the border of Sangli and Kolhapur districts, around 500 representatives of dam evictees are carrying out Tiyya Andolan near the base of the Warna Dam.

Similar protests are also being carried out near the Gad Nadi Dam in Ratnagiri district, Teen Vira Dam in Raigad district, Tembhapuri Dam in Aurangabad district and Dhamani Dam in Kolhapur district. Affected people in Azra Tehsil (Kolhapur) and at Pandharpur in Solapur district.

The basic demands of the agitators are: Giving equal rights to the daughters in ancestral property of PAP families, independent status to Gram Panchayat (with 500 or more population), free vocational training, below poverty-line ration cards; disbursing of funds to women self-help groups; grazing land (gairan) for PAP rehabilitation and absorption of Tiger Project PAP families in forest development programmes.

Interestingly, these policy-level demands have been twice sanctioned in the meetings held by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in 2011 and 2012; but the government for some strange reason has failed to implement it.

According to Vibhute: “Eight months ago the committee appointed by government to look into the issue submitted its recommendations…but the response of the state is just unfathomable. It just refuses to look at the anguish of the people.”

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Man marries thrice to deal with drought in Maharashtra, India #WTFnews

MARRYING FOR WATER: A 65-year-old Thane villager holds up a photograph of him with his three wives. He says he was forced to marry a third time to keep his family of 13 going through the drought. His first wife, he claimed, was ill and his second too weak to walk one-and-a-half to three km every day to fetch water. That duty’s fallen on Wife No. 3

Hit by drought, rural folks pour into Mumbai, Pune

Madhavi Rajadhyaksha TNN

Sangli/Satara: Open trailers packed with families and cattle have become a common sight along the state’s highways. They are a telling sign of the distress that the drought in 15 districts of the state has brought with it. Truckloads of villagers are migrating from the hinterland to cities like Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in desperate search for livelihood.
While many officials deny the drought-driven migration, the absence of male heads in rural homes in water-starved parts of the state reveals another reality. A senior official from Satara admits that the district has witnessed 10% more migration this year. Local officials say the low minimum wages of the Centre’s flagship employment guarantee scheme (NREGA) have failed to stem the outflow of potential job-seekers.
In Khatav taluka, Satara, fragmented families are a sorry reality in one home after another. Landowner Adhik Wagh (32) has taken a break from his driver’s job and is on a brief visit to his native village in Katgoon. “We used to have ksheti (fields) of our own and cattle too. With not a drop of rain this year, there is no ksheti or water to give the cattle. I work in Kolhapur as a driver and earn enough to educate my two children,” said Wagh who recently sold his buffalo.
Worse off are farm labourers like Mugathrao Wagh (65), whose work has dried up with the wasting away of successive crops. “My wife, daughter-in-law and I were all farm hands and would earn enough to feed ourselves. We are all sitting at home now, while my son does hamali (labour) in cities and brings home some money,” said Wagh. Sangli collector says many are choosing city over NREGA 
Sangli/Satara: Satara collector N Ramaswami maintained that migration is tough to estimate, admitting that it is “slightly higher than last year” in the light of a dry spell in the district. District-level surveys had shown that 2,000-3,000 more workers had left the district.
The desperation for jobs is no different in neighbouring Sangli. Dhanashree Gaikwad of Pangri village has been playing mother and father to her two toddlers ever since her husband left for the ‘city’ in search of work. “It is tough living apart, but we have no choice,” she says.
Sangli collector Shyam Wardhane said there was enough work for those who were willing, but admitted that villagers often did not opt for employment under NREGA as they thought minimum wages were too low. Ahmednagar collector Sanjeev Kumar also denied droughtdriven migration in his district, though locals stated otherwise.

Pradeep Gupta, TNN | May 16, 2012,

THANE: A man has been forced to marry thrice to deal with the drought in villages here.

Sixty-five-year-old Ramchandra (name changed to protect identity), a resident of Dengalmal village, on a hilltop in Shahapur taluka, said his first wife was ill and cannot go far away to fetch water for the family of 13, while his second wife was weak.

Ramchandra’s family includes three sons, their wives and three grandsons; his three daughters have got married and now live with their husbands.

He said he first married when he was 20 and has six children from her. He married again as his first wife fell sick, hoping that she would take care of the household work. But as she was too weak and could not handle the workload, he went in for the third marriage 10 years back.

He justified his marriages, claiming that in a year, they faced a problem of water scarcity for six months in their village. They have to often traverse one and a half kilometres to a well in a nearby village, and sometime to the Bhatsa river three km away.

Villagers initially opposed his marriages as they suspected that he was doing it for sexual pleasure.

Hussain Shaikh, a villager, said, “Earlier, we opposed his move for a third marriage, but later we realized that whatever he has done was right, as his third wife now takes care of the family’s water arrangements.”

Sakri Shende, a 70-year-old woman from the village who spends nearly five hours in transporting water with her son’s wife, said, “We normally find Ramchandra’s third wife carrying water. Only when she falls sick, other family members come to the well for water.

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Sex Workers Pride – Sangli, Maharashtra ,India

We are delighted to invite you to join us at the Sex Workers’ Pride March to be held in Sangli on the eve of the International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, the 3rd of March. Every year for the past five years we have held our heads high and joyously marched together to declare to the world that we not only exist but do so with pride claiming our right to self worth, dignity and livelihood, a right that no agency can confer or deny.

Come all:

Pride March: Gather at the Collector office, Sangli rally to the banks of the River Krishna.
Date : 2 March 2012
Time : 5pm – 7pm

In Solidarity,
Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad

contact-meenaseshu@yahoo.com