Indian minister claims rapes happen ‘accidentally’
Print Edition
A minister from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party has said rapes happen “accidentally” in the latest controversial remarks by a politician, amid renewed outrage over attacks against women.
Ramsevak Paikra, the home minister of central Chhattisgarh state who is responsible for law and order, told reporters late on Saturday that rapes did not happen on purpose.
“Such incidents (rapes) do not happen deliberately. These kind of incidents happen accidentally,” Paikra, of the Bharatiya Janata Party which also rules at the national level, said.
Paikra, who was asked for his thoughts on the gang-rape and lynching of two girls in a neighboring state, later said he had been misquoted. His original remarks were broadcast on television networks.
The remarks come just days after the home minister of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state said rapes were “sometimes right, sometimes wrong.”
The minister, Babulal Gaur, spoke on Thursday amid growing anger over the gang-rape and murder of the girls, aged 12 and 14, in northern Uttar Pradesh state late last month.
Modi, whose party came to power in a landslide poll victory and has pledged increased women’s security, has so far stayed silent over the rapes.
India brought in tougher laws last year against sexual offenders after the fatal gang-rape of a student in New Delhi in December 2012, but they have failed to stem violence against women.
Police said a Malaysian woman, 30, was raped in a car last Thursday in the western state of Rajasthan after a man, whom she had met to discuss business projects, drugged her — the latest in a series of sex attacks on foreigners in India.
“As she came to us, we rounded up the accused and placed him under arrest,” Amandeep Singh, a senior police official, said yesterday.
Earlier this year, a Danish tourist was gang-raped at knifepoint in central Delhi.
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