Protesters confront PM Modi in London over rising sexual violence in India
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 for 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 afterward from injuries he sustained while in police custody.
Nearly 40 percent of India’s rape victims are children and the 40,000 reported rapes in 2016 marked a 60 percent 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 is guilty
