India court delivers death sentences for multiple rapes

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: An Indian judge on Friday ordered three men to hang after they were convicted of two gang-rapes, the first death sentences to be handed down for multiple sex attacks since the law was toughened last year.
The three men were found guilty of raping a photojournalist inside an abandoned textile mill in the financial hub of Mumbai last year.
Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam says he asked for the death sentence under a strict anti-rape law introduced in India last year. Nikam described the three as habitual offenders.
The sentences were announced at a court in Mumbai for the two attacks in July and August last year at the same abandoned mill compound in the city, including an attack on a photographer that made global headlines.
Mohammed Salim Ansari, 28, Vijay Mohan Jadhav, 19, and Mohammed Kasim Hafeez Shaikh, 21 were convicted last month after a fast-track trial.
They were subsequently handed life sentences for one of those assaults, the gang-rape of an 18-year-old phone operator. But they were also convicted this week under a new section of the law for being repeat rape offenders, which carries the death penalty.
“There needs to be zero tolerance for such incidents,” Judge Shalini Phansalkar Joshi said as she announced the sentences. “A loud and clear message needs to be sent to society.”
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam confirmed to AFP that this was the first such conviction under the modified law.
India increased penalties for sex crimes after public anger followed the fatal rape of a 23-year-old medical student in December 2012 in New Delhi. Four men were sentenced to death in the New Delhi case.
Also Friday, 24 men were sentenced to prison for raping a teenager in Kerala state in 1996.
One man was sentenced to life and 23 others to varying prison terms on Friday for raping a teenager who was kidnapped and held for several weeks in southern India 18 years ago, a prosecutor said.
The men convicted in the case Friday included a retired professor, lawyers, businessmen and government officials.