India prosecutors seek death for Delhi rapists, defense urges mercy

1 of 7. A protester threatens to throw her sandal at A.P. Singh (not in picture), defence lawyer of one of the four men convicted of raping and murdering a 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist last December, during a protest outside a court in New Delhi September 11, 2013. Indian prosecutors demanded on Wednesday the death penalty for the four men, saying it was important to send a signal to the country that such crimes would not be tolerated.

Credit: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

By Sanjeev Miglani and Sruthi Gottipati

NEW DELHI | Wed Sep 11, 2013 10:40am EDT

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian prosecutors demanded on Wednesday the death penalty for four men convicted of raping and murdering a 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist last December, saying it was important to send a signal to the country that such crimes would not be tolerated.

"The common man will lose faith in the judiciary if the harshest punishment is not given," special public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan told trial judge Yogesh Khanna, who will sentence the men on Friday.

Indeed, outside the court, popular opinion on social media sites and comments by top politicians suggest many Indians want to see the men hanged for a crime the brutality of which shocked even in a country where sex crimes against women are rife.

Social commentators say the attack has forced Indians to confront an uncomfortable truth - that social change, in particular patriarchal attitudes towards women, has not kept pace with rapid economic growth over the past decade.

The case has resonated with thousands of urban Indians who took to the streets in fury after the attack. The victim became a symbol of the daily dangers women face in a country where a rape is reported on average every 21 minutes and acid attacks and incidents of molestation are common.

Bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, and unemployed Mukesh Singh stood at the back of the courtroom surrounded by policemen. They showed no emotion as Krishnan described their crime as "diabolical" and called for them to be hanged.

The parents of the victim, who may not be identified for legal reasons, sat just feet away from the men. After the hearing, her father bluntly told reporters: "They finished my daughter, they deserve the same fate."

The men were found guilty on Tuesday of luring the woman and a male friend onto a bus as the pair returned home from watching a movie at a shopping mall on December 16.

As the bus drove through the streets of the capital, the men repeatedly raped the victim before dumping her and her friend, naked and semi-conscious, on the road.

The men used a metal rod and their hands to pull the woman's organs from her body after raping her, Krishnan said. Her injuries were so severe that she died in hospital in Singapore two weeks after the attack.

"This is an extreme case of depravity," Krishnan said, likening the woman's injuries to someone "cutting open a fruit".

All four of the men denied the charges. Three of them said they were never on the bus while a fourth admitted driving the vehicle but said he knew nothing of the crime. The prosecution said mobile phone records, CCTV footage, DNA evidence and bite marks on the woman's body placed the men at the scene.

India's interior minister, Sushilkumar Shinde said the death penalty was assured in the case, while a senior leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sushma Swaraj, said it was important to "set an example for the future".

Under Indian law, the death penalty is reserved for the "rarest of rare" cases. Even when it is imposed, the authorities rarely carry out executions.

"Hang them, hang them," chanted a small group of protesters outside the court.

There are 477 prisoners on death row in India, according to the interior ministry. Last year, India carried out its first hanging in eight years when it executed the lone survivor of a squad of Pakistan-based militants who attacked Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people.

"JUDGES SHOULD NOT BE BLOODTHIRSTY"

Inside the court, lawyers for the four men pleaded for mercy and repeatedly highlighted the reluctance of Indian judges in the past to impose the death sentence.

Judges should not be bloodthirsty, said lawyer Vivek Sharma, who represents 19-year-old Gupta, the youngest of the four on trial. "You can't give capital punishment on demand."

Sharma said his client had not taken part in the rape or torture of the woman. He asked the court to take into account that Gupta was the sole breadwinner for his family and had to take care of his elderly parents and brother and sister.

A.P. Singh, lawyer for Kumar Singh and Sharma, said the death penalty was a "primitive and cold blooded and simplistic response to complex issues". He painted his clients as downtrodden who deserved a second chance.

Mukesh Singh, who said he had been driving the bus at the time of the attack, should not face the same penalty as his co-accused, his lawyer V.K. Anand told the court.

"At best, he can be held for aiding the others. Punish him, but punish him keeping in mind he was only driving the bus."

Women's rights groups have welcomed the guilty verdict but cautioned against giving the death sentence, saying that research across the world has shown that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent and the case should not set a precedent for all rapes to be punished with hanging.

If the men do receive the death penalty, India's high court will still have to confirm the sentences. The four are expected to file appeals, so proceedings could still go on for months or even years.

(This story has been refiled to remove reference to alias of one of the convicted men in paragraph 20)

(Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Anurag Kotoky; Writing by Ross Colvin; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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EU's Barroso urges Europe to complete banking union

1 of 2. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso addresses the European Parliament during a debate on the state of union, in Strasbourg, September 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Vincent Kessler

By Claire Davenport

STRASBOURG, France | Wed Sep 11, 2013 12:23pm EDT

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso declared on Wednesday that economic recovery was within sight after nearly four years of Europe's debt crisis and urged governments to move faster to complete a stalled banking union.

In his last State of the Union speech before European Parliament elections next May, Barroso offered no new policy proposals but appealed to member states to redouble efforts to quell financial turmoil that has led to a drawn-out recession and soaring unemployment.

"What we can and must do, first and foremost is delivering the banking union. It is the first and most urgent phase on the way to deepen our economic and monetary union," he told lawmakers in Strasbourg.

His comments were an implicit challenge to Germany, the EU's leading power, which has worked to limit the scope of a single banking supervisor and slow the drive for a single bank resolution authority and fund, citing legal constraints and the wish to spare its taxpayers from liabilities.

The goal of creating a single framework and backstop for around 6,000 euro zone banks, with mechanisms to wind down failed lenders and protect savers' deposits, is one of the EU's most ambitious and challenging projects.

In debate after the speech, opponents criticized the Commission for not having done enough to tackle unemployment, the worst legacy of the crisis and an issue that could stir a big protest vote in next year's elections.

"On unemployment, we can safely ask whether the Commission couldn't have come up with a more active policy, like more growth-stimulating measures," Martin Schulz, the Socialist president of the parliament and a possible contender to be the next Commission chief, told reporters.

Efforts to implement the banking union plans have stalled in the run-up to German elections on September 22, and there are doubts about whether Berlin will add impetus to the project even after a new government is in place.

Barroso will finish his second five-year term as Commission president in November next year and is not expected to be re-appointed, so there was a strong dose of legacy in his address.

The centre-right former Portuguese premier launched a strong defense of Europe's crisis management ahead of pan-European elections that are expected to bring a surge in anti-EU votes, potentially shifting the balance of power in Brussels.

It was governments' fiscal mismanagement and financial market excesses - not EU policies - that had caused the crisis, he said, decrying a tendency for successes to be "nationalized" and failures "Europeanized".

He also urged leaders not to slacken in overhauling their economies carrying out the structural reforms needed to put the euro zone and wider EU on a more stable footing. The biggest risk was a lack of political commitment, he said.

"The recovery is within sight. This should push us to keep up our efforts," Barroso said in an hour-long address that received lukewarm responses from opponents. "We owe it to our 26 million unemployed."

ALL IN THE SAME BOAT

In what might be perceived as another veiled criticism of Germany, Barroso said all 17 euro zone countries were in the same boat. While several - Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus among them - have required bailouts, that did not mean the rest had no work to do or couldn't help.

"When you are in the same boat, one cannot say: 'your end of the boat is sinking'. We were in the same boat when things went well and we are in it together when things are difficult," he said.

"There is a direct link between one country's loans and another country's banks, between one country's investments and another country's business, between one country's workers and another country's companies. This kind of interdependence means only European solutions can work."

The greatest concern for Barroso and other top policymakers is that the appetite for reform is waning as pressure from financial markets tapers off and a recovery begins.

A lot of the calm in markets over the past six months is due to the announcement last year by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi that he will do "whatever it takes" to defend the euro and ensure the monetary union holds together.

But the ECB's commitment has to be backed by reforms by the euro zone, whether adjustments to the pension system in France, lowering labor costs in Spain and Italy, meeting reform targets in Greece and Portugal or spurring consumption in Germany.

(Writing by Luke Baker and Robin Emmott; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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