India toughens law for young criminals after outrage over rapist release
Politicians in India have voted to lower to 16 the age at which a person can be tried as an adult for heinous crimes.
The changes made to the existing juvenile law reduce the age from 18, and follow anger over the release of a minor convicted in a fatal 2012 gang rape who served the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home.
The man, now an adult, was released on Sunday. He was short of his 18th birthday when he and five other men brutally raped a 23-year-old young woman on board a moving bus in the heart of the capital New Delhi.
The amended legislation needs to be signed by India’s president before it becomes a law.
