NEW DELHI, 24 June 2005 — India’s Cabinet yesterday approved a new law to curb growing violence against women in the home, saying existing legislation is inadequate.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Bill will be presented in Parliament when it resumes next month and is expected to get cross-party support, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters.

It would address legal complaints by women “who are or have been in a relationship with the abuser where both parties have lived together in a shared household and are related by consanguinity, marriage or adoption,” he said.

The crimes covered include dowry payments to a husband’s family, which are illegal in India but still widely practiced. The National Crime Records Bureau says 8,800 women are killed every year in dowry disputes.

India also reports nearly 18,000 rape cases every year and 8,800 crimes against children. Every hour 16 cases of various types of violence against women are reported, according to the Crime Records Bureau.

The new law provides for the appointment of protection officers and private service-providers to help abused women get medical and legal aid and a safe place to stay.

Harassment by relatives living together in a traditional Indian family is also included in the draft law, Mukherjee said.

The bill is more comprehensive than a 1983 law against mental cruelty which mainly seeks to help victims of marital violence, said legal expert Vishvender Verma.

“In 1983, domestic violence was recognized only as a specific criminal offense and the law made then just dealt with cruelty by a husband or his relatives towards the wife. But this bill deals with four different types of cruelty against women,” Verma was quoted as saying by AFP.

In Bombay, meanwhile, 12 men were found guilty by a court of gang raping seven women during a five-hour spree of violence in a remote western village four years ago, a public prosecutor said.

Judge Shalini Joshi yesterday sentenced five of the accused to life imprisonment and seven others to 14 years in prison. Two were acquitted for lack of evidence. One of the accused, Bhausaheb Desai, turned state witness.

“The judge gave the landmark order today in this mass rape case that had rocked the state and the country in 2001,” public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told AFP from the court in Ahmadnagar.

The accused, members of a gang, had swooped on the village Kothewadi, in Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra state, in January 2001 and went on a rampage of looting and rape.

The victims, aged between 26 and 70, were repeatedly raped by the gangsters during the five hours of violence in the village.

The court heard that 14 women were actually raped in Kothewadi village that night but only seven came forward for the trial. Two of the 14 have died.