Indian Kamasutra : A rape in every 28 minutes reported!

CHANDREYEE CHATTERJEE, The Telegraph , Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Calcutta, Nov. 27: Incidents of violence against women are on the rise in India, with one act of sexual harassment being reported every 12 minutes, one rape every 28 minutes and one dowry death every 67 minutes. And these are just the tip of the iceberg, as most cases go unreported.

“In a situation such as this, we feel it’s time to actively involve men in the struggle to stop violence against women,” said Anuradha Kapoor, director, Swayam, a non-profit women’s organisation committed to ending violence against women and children.

Swayam is organising a campaign in Calcutta to stop violence against women, in association with DRIK India, an alternative media organisation, and International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT), an international forum for personal contact and professional development among women broadcasters.

The campaign is part of an international initiative originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute, sponsored by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991. It kicked off on November 25 with a mass awareness programme, including an exhibition of posters and performances by the theatre and music groups of Swayam.

The campaign ends on December 10, marking International Human Rights Day. “This period has a special significance. It coincides with the International Day against Violence against Women, World AIDS Day and World Disability Day,” said Kapoor.

Swayam’s campaign will feature workshops by artists and rights activists, photography exhibitions, panel discussions and film shows.

India has killed 10 mln girls in 20 years - Renuka Chowdhury

By Palash Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a "national crisis".

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys.

The ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

Economic empowerment of women was key to change, she said.

"Even today when you go to a temple, you are blessed with 'May you have many sons'," she said.

"The minute you empower them to earn more or equal (to men), social prejudices vanish."

The practice of killing the girl child is more prevalent among the educated, including in upmarket districts of New Delhi, making it more challenging for the government, the minister said.

"How do we tell educated people that you must not do it? And these are people who would visit all the female deities and pray for strength but don't hesitate to kill a girl child," she said.



Hindu priests pressed on abortions

AFP,Friday, December 15, 2006

NEW DELHI: India's Hindu priests came under criticism Friday for blessings about sons, seen as leading to the number of abortions of girls and skewed sex ratios across the country.

It is common for priests to bless young women by saying, "May you be the mother of a hundred sons", and many Hindus believe the soul will not find release unless a son performs his parents' last rites.

"The problem is very serious and is part of the deep mindset in India," Renuka Chowdhury, minister for women and child development, said.

"They have to stop giving blessings about sons," Chowdhury said. "They should bless couples with healthy children."

The remarks came the same week that the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said India was losing almost 7,000 girls a day, mostly due to sex-selective abortion.

Under Indian law, tests to find out the gender of an unborn baby are illegal if not done for medical reasons, but the practice continues in what activists say is a flourishing multi-million-dollar business.

India : A rape in every 28 Minutes

CHANDREYEE CHATTERJEE, The Telegraph , Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Calcutta, Nov. 27: Incidents of violence against women are on the rise in India, with one act of sexual harassment being reported every 12 minutes, one rape every 28 minutes and one dowry death every 67 minutes. And these are just the tip of the iceberg, as most cases go unreported.


“In a situation such as this, we feel it’s time to actively involve men in the struggle to stop violence against women,” said Anuradha Kapoor, director, Swayam, a non-profit women’s organisation committed to ending violence against women and children.

Swayam is organising a campaign in Calcutta to stop violence against women, in association with DRIK India, an alternative media organisation, and International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT), an international forum for personal contact and professional development among women broadcasters.

The campaign is part of an international initiative originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute, sponsored by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991. It kicked off on November 25 with a mass awareness programme, including an exhibition of posters and performances by the theatre and music groups of Swayam.

The campaign ends on December 10, marking International Human Rights Day. “This period has a special significance. It coincides with the International Day against Violence against Women, World AIDS Day and World Disability Day,” said Kapoor.

Swayam’s campaign will feature workshops by artists and rights activists, photography exhibitions, panel discussions and film shows.

Filmmaker Goutam Ghosh, actor Rahul Bose and others will speak on issues like violence against women and the need to involve men in the attempt to eradicate the menace.

Asian women lowest-paid workers in Britain

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA, October 23, 2006

LONDON, OCTOBER 23: Leading black and Asian professional women in Britain have called on their peers to ‘storm the doors’ of blue chip companies, following a report this week that shows that a form of employment apartheid is rife in Britain.

Asian and black women are the lowest-paid workers in Britain, according to a report for the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University.

While black men are paid less than white men, black and Asian women are paid the least of all. Some earn 28 per cent less than white women.

Saira Khan, the businesswoman who came to national prominence on the BBC reality programme The Apprentice, said that it wasn't the figures that made her angry, but that the EOC should do more to promote role models.

"I don't need a report to tell me black and Asian women are low paid," she said. "I knew that already."

36-year-old Khan, who has just launched a baby products business, said "Where I differ from other Asian women is that I've always tried to get into blue chip companies so I could learn and work my way up.

"If I failed an interview I didn't think it was because I'm Asian or a Muslim. Prejudice is an obstacle that has to be overcome in any work situation.

One of the reasons is because (Asian women) don't have role models to live up to. So they work for family businesses with no training, no opportunities for growth. Or there is this tendency to start your own business - but you need to learn how to do it," she added.

Visitors flock to 'sati' village

Thursday, 24 August 2006

By Faisal Mohammed Ali
BBC News, Tulsipur

Until now a mere speck on the revenue maps, the village of Tulsipur in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is seeing a flurry of activity.

People are flocking to the village where a woman, Janakrani, is believed to have committed the outlawed Hindu practice of "sati".

Sati, or the practice of a widow burning herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre, is believed to have originated 700 years ago.

The rare practice mostly happens in parts of northern and central India.

The state government insists the case is one of suicide and it should be treated as one.

Inquiry ordered

But the chairperson of the state women's commission, Relam Chauhan, says Janakrani committed an act of sati when she immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, Prem Narayan.

A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the case, while the National Commission for Women has asked for a report in a week.

Ms Chauhan, who is visiting Tulsipur to "do an on-the-spot inquiry into the whole affair", says: "It has to be verified if someone encouraged or coerced her to take this extreme step."

Residents of Tulsipur and many of the visitors to the village in Sagar district say they are impressed by Janakrani's "extraordinary devotion to her long-ailing husband".

In a voice full of admiration, one visitor, Ram Dayal, says he heard about the case and has come for a look.

Madhya Pradesh

A number of saffron-robed Hindu monks have also arrived here and everyone's first stop is the remains of the pyre - now a six by three-foot-long egg-shaped spot on the ground.

The police have taken the charred bones of the couple for forensic tests but a few tiny remains of Janakrani's clothes and bangles can still be recognised in the ashes.

A group of visitors from Deori, a small town 150km (100 miles) away, try to touch the ashes, but they are stopped by the police who are deployed here.

'Hindu ritual'

Janakrani's son, Ram Avtar, says his mother burned herself to death while they had gone to take a bath in the river after performing the last rites of their father and there were no witnesses to the incident.

"My mother told my wife she was going out for a while, but we became suspicious when she did not return for long and went to look for her. We found only her ashes, she was completely burnt," he says.

The police and state administration argue that since there was no ceremony and no one encouraged her, this cannot be called a case of sati.

Also, they say sati is a Hindu ritual and Janakrani was a tribal.

But many here say that some of the Hindu social and religious practices have been adopted by the tribes in the recent years.

Roop Kanwar case

Cases of sati are very rare in India.

The last incident, involving a 65-year-old woman, took place in Madhya Pradesh in 2002.

The most high-profile sati incident was in Rajasthan in 1987 when 18-year-old Roop Kanwar was burned to death.

The case sparked national and international outrage.

Police charged Roop Kanwar's father-in-law and brother-in-law with forcing her to sit on the pyre with her husband's body, but the two men were acquitted by an Indian court in October 1996.

Sati is believed to have originated some 700 years ago among the ruling class or Rajputs in India.

The Rajput women burnt themselves after their men were defeated in battles to avoid being taken by the victors. But it came to be seen as a measure of wifely devotion in later years.
The custom was outlawed by India's British rulers in 1829 following demands by Indian reformers.

Indian-origin woman is Opposition leader in Trinidad

Thursday, 27 April 2006

Port of Spain (Trinidad), April 26 (PTI): A woman of Indian origin has become the first woman Leader of Opposition in the Trinidad and Tobago parliament.

Kamla Persad Bissessar, a former Attorney General, was appointed Tuesday by the country's President George Maxwell Richards following incumbent Basdeo Panday's incarceration.

The President has also declared Panday's Couva North constituency seat vacant. According to the country's law, Panday automatically vacated his post after his conviction.

Meanwhile, his lawyers tried to get Panday released on bail, but the High Court has requested more documents and the hearing will now resume today.

Panday, a former Prime Minister and chairman of the Opposition United National Congress, was on Monday sentenced to six years in jail on three counts for failing to declare his assets in a London bank account.

He was ordered to serve two years in jail for each charge but the sentences will run concurrently, which means Panday will effectively serve two years in prison.

Panday will also be paying fines of USD 10,000 and has been asked to reimburse USD 250,000 to the state.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, said he was sorry to learn of the ruling against his predecessor, but asserted that it sent a clear warning to politicians that none of them were above the law.

US Judge reimposes 97-month term on Lakireddy Bali Reddy

Wednesday, 24 May 2006

Reddy sought reduction of sentence for illegally bringing girls and women into U.S.

By Josh Richman, insidebayarea.com

OAKLAND — A federal judge resentenced a Berkeley businessman Monday to the 97-month prison term he had drawn in 2001 for bringing girls and women from India to the Bay Area for cheap labor and sexual favors.

Despite statements in court Monday from five of Lakireddy Bali Reddy's seven living victims that they supported an earlier release, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said the two other victims' unrebutted testimony of extreme emotional distress from Reddy's crimes was sufficient basis for her to reimpose the sentence term.

Reddy, 69, is in the federal prison at Lompoc; his projected release date, unchanged by Monday's hearing, remains April 2, 2008.

He and his son, Vijay Lakireddy, first were indicted in 2000, accused of having had an Indian man pose as the father of two sisters to bring them into the country on fraudulent temporary work visas. The elder sister died in November 1999 of carbon monoxide poisoning after a heater in her Berkeley apartment malfunctioned.

Prosecutors said these girls and others brought here by similar means were used by Reddy as workers at his and his family's businesses, and for his own sexual gratification.

Reddy pleaded guilty in 2001 to two counts of importing minors for immoral sexual purposes and one count each of tax fraud and conspiracy to commit immigration fraud.

Defense attorneys Cristina Arguedas and Ted Cassman in recent years had convinced Wilken to reexamine his sentence — imposed by Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, who since has recused herself from the case for unknown reasons — due to problems that came to light soon after his 2001 plea bargain. Several victims claimed Telegu-speaking interpreter Uma Rao of Berkeley had urged them to exaggerate or embellish their testimony, or had misrepresented their testimony in translation.

At issue was whether victims' statements to a probation officer for a preresentencing report were reliable and detailed enough. The defense argued for a maximum of 78 months.

"Judge Armstrong was reading lies" when she relied on the probation report to demand a tough sentence for Reddy, Arguedas said Monday, adding Rao's damage to the case "is something that affected everything that happened here. ... She should be prosecuted for what she did."

Eight victims figured in the case. One is the person who died in 1999; five of the others were in court to describe the case's impact on them. Some praised Reddy's role in bringing them to the United States and some actually urged his early release; none objected to reducing his sentence.

But Wilken said she was convinced to stick by the same 97-month term by the earlier testimony of two victims who've stuck by their original accounts, and who weren't present in court Monday. Reddy long since has paid the $2 million in restitution imposed with his original sentence.

Vijay Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2002 to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and was sentenced to two years in prison, which he has served. Prasad Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of conspiracy to employ unauthorized aliens and was sentenced to one year of home detention, a $20,000 fine and 300 hours of community service.

Reddy's brother and sister-in-law, Jayaprakash and Annapurna Lakireddy, each pleaded guilty to one count of immigration fraud in 2001; he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and was released last June, while she served six months of home detention and paid a $2,000 fine. Venkateswara Vemireddy, who'd posed as the girls' father, was given probation and deported to India.

Judgements can be read from
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/lbreddy.html

Ethnic Indian Woman could be Malaysia's First Astronaut

Kuala Lumpur, Mar 15: An ethnic Indian woman was on Tuesday named among four candidates short listed to become Malaysia's first astronaut and travel to the International Space Station next year.

S Vanajah Siva Subramaniam, 35, will travel along with three Malay men to the Russian Space Agency in Moscow soon to undergo medical and technical tests that will establish which of them will take part in the scientific expedition on board the International Space Station in 2007.

The three men are Malaysia Airlines pilot Mohammed Faiz Kamaluddin, 34; army dentist Faiz Khaleed, 26; and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a 34-year-old hospital medical officer.

The four were chosen from more than 11,000 candidates who had submitted their applications in a process that started in 2003.

Vanajah is an engineer by profession. She was the only woman to be short-listed. All the three men are from the dominant Malay community, while Vanajah belongs to the ethnic Indian community, which comprises 8 per cent of Malaysia’s 26-million-strong population.

The two-week round in Russia will test the candidates neurological fitness and ability to adapt to a weightless environment. Two candidates will be chosen out of the three and the two will undergo 18 months of training at the Russian Space Agency.

Later only one will get to spend 10 days in a planned scientific expedition aboard the International Space Station in October 2007.

Malaysia’s space programme is likely to cost around 25 million dollars.

British grooms fly out with dowry, but without the bride

Monday, 13 March 2006

The Times

NEW DELHI: Hundreds of British Asian men have been accused of abandoning new brides in India after securing lucrative dowry payments.

Police in India are investigating more than a thousand allegations from young women who claim that they have been lured into arranged marriages with the promise of a new life in Britain. Once dowries of up to £9,000 have been paid, the men abandon them, it is claimed.

The men, in some instances, return to India to marry a number of times, but the women’s lives are left in ruins in a society where divorce is still frowned upon.

“It’s a common sight: young girls with their parents, clutching their marriage papers and weeping. We have thousands of abandoned wives,” Parminder Kaur, chairwoman of the National Commission for Women in the Punjab, said.

Poorva Sharma, 24, from the village of Surajpur, Punjab, believed that her parents had found her a perfect partner in Rakesh Gupta, 35, a businessman from Coventry. They married in a traditional Hindu ceremony in India in July 2002 and lived together in India for a fortnight before he returned to Britain.

According to Ms Sharma’s solicitor, her father paid £5,625 to Gupta as a dowry payment: the now illegal deal, still widely practised, whereby a groom is paid for entering a marriage. The family was later asked for more money, it was alleged.

Ms Sharma’s dreams were shattered when she applied for permission to join her husband in Coventry and the British High Commission refused, because it said that Gupta had already married other Indian women.

“They told me he had been married a number of times, and they were suspicious of why I would want to go out there. I felt like dying. My life had ended before it had begun,” Ms Sharma said.

It emerged that Gupta was unemployed and had previously married two other women in the Punjab, according to court documents. One of them, Vandana Gupta, allegedly married Mr Gupta in July 1995 in Ludhiana. She left him in January 1996 after her parents repeatedly received demands for a dowry payment, she said. After parting, she discovered that she was pregnant.

She said that her husband obtained an ex parte divorce without informing her and had failed to pay maintenance for their son.

Following a complaint from Sharma, Gupta was arrested in March 2003 for dowry harassment but left India before the case came to court. Police documents show that he is now a “proclaimed offender” in India after skipping bail.

Rajinder Singh Rathi, Deputy Superintendent of Police in the Punjab, said: “We hope to get him through Interpol.”

The Times tracked down Mr Gupta to a terraced house that he owns in Coventry. He said that he had married only once in India — to Ms Sharma — and that he had been subjected to threats and blackmail from her family. “She was not a good wife,” he said. He added that he had never married Ms Gupta.

Gupta appears to have failed to tell his solicitors that he was wanted by Indian police. When The Times sent the law firm Heer Manak a police document proving this, the senior partner, Kulwant Manak, said that he was surprised to see it.

Social workers who help the Punjab’s abandoned women said that grooms exploited the overpowering desire of some Indians to go abroad. Britain, Canada and America still hold an allure for some in India as countries where jobs and good salaries are guaranteed.

Punjab police said that there had been a 40 per cent rise in the number of fraudulent marriages in the past three years. The authorities have issued a booklet warning parents to check the background of prospective grooms abroad.

In some cases software engineers have turned out to be welders, while doctors were waiters, social workers said.

Satnam Chana, a social worker in Jalandhar, Punjab, said that parents were often too eager to marry off their daughters quickly. “We tell parents that we can ask people in the UK to check a groom’s background but we’ve had only two requests in two years. They just hope blindly that it will be all right,” she said.

The motivations of British Asian men vary. Most, according to the authorities, are hoping for dowry payments. Others, however, are second-generation British Asians forced into marriages in India by their parents.

Many of the rejected women, convinced that their lives are over, become suicidal. Left in limbo, in a society obsessed with marriage, they are neither married in the real sense nor free to remarry.

Legal action against missing British grooms is difficult. An Indian family court can send a summons to a British Asian man but it can easily be ignored.

The extradition treaty between Britain and India does not cover matrimonial crimes, according to legal experts. The British High Commission in Delhi said that officials were examining ways of closing this legal loophole. There is, at least, a growing awareness of the problem in India. Ms Sharma said that her sister married last month — to a local man. “I didn’t want her to suffer the way I have. I’m rotting here, with no future. I just want my husband to rot in jail too,” she said.