It is welcome that a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih have stayed the order of Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra of the Allahabad High Court that had downgraded the criminal offence of attempt to rape determined by a lower court to a lesser charge of assault or use of criminal force with intent to disrobe, and aggravated sexual assault. This matters not just for gender justice, and social justice (the accused and the victim are from different castes separated by a power differential), but also for India’s economic prospects.The accused were two men from an Uttar Pradesh village, socially powerful and bearing licensed firearms, who had, in November 2021, found the lower court, groped an eleven-year-old girl, broken her pyjama drawstring and tried to pull her down below a culvert. Passers-by intervened and they let the girl go. For two months, the girl’s family could not even get a First Information Report registered against the accused.
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