Heena Sharma Blog

President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday rejected the mercy plea of Mukesh Singh, one of the four men convicted in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case , sources said. The rejection came soon after the Union Home Ministry forwarded the petition to the president on Friday morning. "It's a very good thing. Our hopes have gone up after the disheartening news that the execution might be delayed," the young woman's father told PTI as news came in of the rejection. Mukesh had filed his mercy petition two days ago. The four convicts -- Mukesh (32), Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- were to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar Jail, a Delhi court had announced on January 7 while issuing their death warrants. However, the Delhi government informed the high court during a hearing that the execution of the convicts will not take place on the day as a mercy plea had been filed by Mukesh. Read More

Uber Technologies Inc . found more than 3,000 allegations of sexual assaults involving drivers or passengers on its platform in the US last year, part of an extensive and long-awaited review in response to public safety concerns. The ride-hailing company released an 84-page safety report Thursday, seeking to quantify the misconduct and deaths that occur on its system and argue that its service is safer than alternatives. US customers took about 1.3 billion trips last year, Uber said. About 50 people have died in Uber collisions annually for the past two years, at a rate about half the national average for automotive fatalities, according to the company. Nine people were killed in physical assaults last year, Uber said. Uber drivers reported nearly as many allegations of sexual assault as passengers, who made 56 per cent of the claims. There is little comparable data on assaults in taxis or other transportation systems, and experts have said the attacks are widely under-rep...

Women speaking out about sexual violence on social media and elsewhere in recent times marks a significant departure from the norm. Just how much so, can be gauged from the government-backed National Family Health Survey. The latest installment of the data that the International Institute for Population Sciences helped collect, was released in December 2017. It shows that that less than a fifth of women ever even told anyone about instances of sexual violence (see chart 1). There is also no distinction in reporting between urban and rural areas despite the former having better access to facilities like education. The median urban female completes seven years of schooling compared to 3.1 years for rural women. Less than 15 per cent of either category sought help following sexual or physical violence (see chart 2). Wealth also doesn't seem to matter when it comes to such instances. The percentage of those seeking help is the same for both the poorest and the richest-les...