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Comment by adityab | Hacker News Reader

Many people wanted the juvenile to be retried retroactively as an adult, "because this case is special".

India should:

1. Not pass knee-jerk laws, it takes a long time to undo the damage.

2. Do away with the death penalty.

Mobs of 'concerned citizens' always turn into sadistic assholes when they know their anger is righteous. But once the punishment of death is off the table, there would be one less way to cause serious damage.

You should see how the discourse in India has become, with good people suggesting more and more creative ways of torturing the rapists; disembowelment, chemical castration, and reversed re-enactment of the original rape have all been suggested.

A national exercise in revenge is sickening. Good, kind people braying for blood is sickening.

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This is no knee jerk reaction, it was tabled a good two years ago, the Lok Sabha had already passed the bill and today the Rajya Sabha. Though it might appear as a brash move to lower the age, the clause of being under age has been misused by organized crime as the least punishment was applicable.

Creative suggestions and covering those in detail is a media propaganda to keep the minutes running on their 24hr news channels.

the clause of being under age has been misused by organized crime as the least punishment was applicable

And should we change our morals and flush away decades of cultivated ethics about juvenile justice because organized crime groups recruit underage people?

Creative suggestions and covering those in detail is a media propaganda

Here's an MP from the upper house of parliament, saying:

"Hands and legs of the males who commit rapes should be broken. A law for this should be enacted in this House." [1]

That's not propaganda. This is happening openly - because this time it's okay for people to show their worst sides.

[1]: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-make-law-to-break-hands...

If the real problem is misuse of clause of being underage by organized criminals, then laws against organized crime and even more importantly it seems in India's case the infrastructure to prosecute the guilty should be strengthened. Toughening the laws for under aged does not seem the appropriate response in that case.

>Good, kind people braying for blood is sickening.

Then they aren't good people. They think their horrible behavior is justified for some reason, just like most people who do horrible things. That one may personally empathized with one group over the others shouldn't blind us to the same underlying pattern.

The problem is not punishing the rapist; it is catching the rapist and pushing the case towards sentence.

A lot of rape cases are unreported, unfilled, not looked for thoroughly, misattributed or the criminal is let go because he is well-connected, minor, minority or inconvenient in any other way.

Pushing the severity of punishment for the slim share of criminals who we managed to catch does not do much towards crime prevention. They should clearly be aiming at inescapable justice rather than sadistic justice.

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