Feminist Indian Water Minister Uma Bharti Says She Had Rape 'Suspects' Tortured

Via Jeff, J4MB: Article excerpts:

An Indian minister says she made rape suspects [note, rape suspects, not convicted rapists – many (possibly most) will have been the victims of false rape allegations] beg for their lives and ordered police to torture them.
Uma Bharti, the water resources minister, claims she told the men’s accusers to watch as they were hung upside down. [How does she have the authority to do this, as the water resources minister?]
“Rapists should be tortured in front of victims until they beg for forgiveness,” she said.
“The rapists should be hung upside down and beaten till their skin comes off,” the minister is reported to have said.
“Salt and chilli should be rubbed on their wounds until they scream. Mothers and sisters should watch so they can get closure.”…
Ms Bharti said that when she was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh state from 2003-4, she took the same attitude.

The piece has links to other BBC pieces including a lengthy but fascinating one, Does India have a problem with false rape claims?.
Written by a woman – inevitably – it drifts into feminist propaganda at one point, but before then it reports the views of some Indian men’s rights activists. An extract:

… when a body called the Delhi Commission for Women published a report in 2014 describing 53% of rapes reported in the city the previous year as “false” this was seized upon by men’s rights activists as evidence that the legal changes and noisy public debate had ended up making victims out of men.

“Of all the rape cases that are registered, only 1% is genuine,” says Gupta’s lawyer, Vinay Sharma, who regularly defends men accused of rape in Delhi.
“The rest are either registered to take revenge or to take advantage of the person in some financial matter,” he says.
Men’s rights activist Partha Sadhukhan takes a similar view.
“The reality at that point in time was that India had enough stringent laws to curb rape and punish the offenders,” he says.
“Today the definition of rape has changed so much and anything and everything is reported as rape.”

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