Hundreds of protesters confront PM Modi in London over rising tide of sexual violence in India

Wed, Apr 18, 2018 | By publisher


Foreign

Hundreds of noisy protesters confronted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
when he arrived in London on Wednesday, demonstrating over a rising tide of sexual violence at home
including two particularly brutal rapes.

Holding placards reading “Modi go home” and “we stand against Modi’s agenda of hate and greed,” they gathered
outside Downing Street and parliament as Modi arrived for talks with Prime Minister Theresa May.

Protests have erupted across India after the rape cases were reported. Police officers and a politician are
under investigation in two of the unrelated cases.

In a crime that shocked India, an 8-year-old Muslim girl in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir was kidnapped,
drugged and held for several days while she was raped repeatedly and then murdered.

In the other case, a state lawmaker from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party stands of raping a teenager.

No action was taken against the politician until the girl threatened to set herself on fire earlier this month.

Her father died soon afterwards from injuries he sustained while in police custody.

Nearly 40 per cent of India’s rape victims are children and the 40,000 reported rapes in 2016 marked a 60 per cent
increase over the level in 2012, the year that a sickening rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in the
capital New Delhi sparked nationwide demonstrations.

Modi addressed the outrage over the latest rapes by promising justice regardless of whoever the guilty
were. (Reuters/NAN)

– Apr. 18, 2018 @ 16:18 GMT

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