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Rome, May 29, 2012: A 37-year-old Indian migrant in Italy killed his pregnant wife because she loved wearing western clothes and he wanted to punish her for going against Indian traditions.
The Indian -- whose name was given as Singhj Kulbir -- told police in Piacenza city in northern Italy that he strangled
to death his 27-year-old wife -- named as Kaur Balwinde -- before throwing her corpse in the Po river, the AKI news agency reported.
Investigators said Kulbir, who worked for an agricultural company, killed his wife to punish her for dressing like a Westerner against Indian traditions. Balwinde's body was found floating Sunday in the Po river near Piacenza, a total of 153 days after she went missing.
The mother of a five-year-old boy, Balwinde was three months pregnant, according to the PiacenzaSera news website.
Another Italian news agency AGI said the accused killed his "excessively westernized" young Indian wife because he feared he would lose her.
The woman's father reported her disappearance on May 1.
Her husband told the military police that he was sure she had left home because she wanted to leave him.
Kulbir, however, has no criminal record.
He confessed when his wife's body was found on the river bank near S.Nazzaro di Monticelli D'Ongina. The body was spotted by two girls walking in the area.
The AGI report said Balwinde lived for about 10 years with her husband in Baselico Duce village, on a farm where the man looked after the cattle.
She was a housewife and occasionally did domestic jobs and was known and liked by other mothers with children attending the local kindergarten. The other women had organised a search party when she disappeared.
Her husband too led a normal, quiet life and was seen taking their little boy to school.
The woman's family has lived in Tuscany for around 20 years.
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To their benefit, even if they get arrested, they can pay few rupees and get out of the issue, without even getting locked up. There criminal record file like in US or UK, These men can get back to the streets and commit rape again. That is why RAPE IS THE OFFICIAL PASS TIME FOR INDIAN MEN
For the millions of Indian men who haven't benefited from the buoyant economy and remain trapped in poverty, the sight of successful, independent women is anathema.
Raj also noted that, as is the case in the U.S. and other Western nations, most Indian rapists are friends, neighbors or even relatives of the victims.
“The vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by an individual known to the victim,” she said.
Citing official data, Raj pointed out only 4 percent of men arrested for rape were strangers to their victims, while the other 96 percent were known to the victims or their families.
“This really belies this belief that rapes have increased because women and girls are more mobile in societies,” she said.
Consider the case of the teeming capital city of New Delhi, which accounts for an astounding one-quarter of all rapes officially recorded in the vast country, according to data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau, or NCRB.
Delhi leads India in all incidents of crimes against women, including rape, molestation, dowry harassment and domestic violence, Jagori's Safe Delhi Campaign reported.
The capital also was the site of 23.8 percent of rape cases, 38.9 percent of kidnapping and abduction cases, 15.2 percent of dowry deaths and 14.1 percent of molestation cases.
“Women in Delhi face high levels of violence. ... Women are ... unsafe on Delhi streets, running the daily risk of harassment, attack, assault, rape and murder," stated Jagori, a women's rights organization. "On the other hand, they do not seem to be very safe at home either -- official statistics show that in Delhi as elsewhere most crimes against women are committed by close relatives within the four walls of the home.”
Last year, Indian media reported on the particularly horrific experience of a woman in Delhi who was raped by an older relative. When she escaped his house and hailed a taxi, the cabbie and two of his friends then raped her again.
An Al-Jazeera video documentary indicated that in Delhi, a city of some 20 million, 80 percent of women said they have been at least sexually harassed. If accurate, this figure would mean that at least 5 million women in the city alone have had this unpleasant experience (or worse).
Moreover, an astonishing four-fifths of all women in Delhi fear for their safety on the streets, especially at night.
However, the actual number of rapes in Delhi -- and India as a whole -- is likely to be dramatically higher than suggested by published statistics.
For example, Jagori stated that while almost one-half (45 percent) of women in Delhi say they have been stalked by men in public, only a scant 0.8 percent of these women even bothered to report such harassment to the police.
Almost three-fifths (58 percent) of women who have been so abused said they didn’t even consider notifying police, because they felt the cops wouldn’t do anything or would blame the women themselves for the assaults perpetrated on their bodies.
Also, it is reasonable to assume that educated Indian women are more willing to report rapes than are uneducated, rural, poor women, who fear both the authorities and the repercussions of a rape allegation.
Moreover, while most rapes in India that are reported to police occur in urban areas, there are untold numbers of sexual assaults in rural villages that are never recorded, because police either do not exist there or they are hopelessly corrupt or incompetent.
Consequently, rape and crime statistics in India are vague.
Nonetheless, Anita Raj, a professor in the division of global public health in the department of medicine at the University of California at San Diego, said that crimes against women in India have indeed been steadily rising over the past several years.
This view is echoed by women's organizations and rights activists across India, citing anecdotal evidence.
“I feel this [increase in rape statistics] may be attributable in part to increased reporting and convictions,” Raj said. “There is greater support for rape victims in India than ever before, but, simultaneously, the stigmatization of rape victims [including the negative effects on the likelihood of future marriage] remains all too often the norm.”
It is unclear why Delhi has witnessed a far worse epidemic of rape and sexual assault than megacity peers such as Mumbai and Calcutta (which also boast huge populations and a mass migration of people from the rural hinterlands).
Jagori cited a number of factors that make Delhi unsafe for women: dark or poorly lighted streets; derelict parks and empty lots; badly maintained public spaces; inadequate signage; lack of public toilets; poor public transport, as well as rude bus drivers and conductors; insufficient presence and unresponsive/aggressive attitudes of police and civic authorities; isolation from neighbors and the lack of community life; traditional notions of privacy and the refusal of neighbors and police to intervene in situations of domestic violence; a "macho" culture; and a general lack of respect for women’s rights.
However, such conditions exist across much of urban India, so there must be other factors behind Delhi's particularly virulent atmosphere of brutality against women.
Al-Jazeera contended part of this apparent escalation in violence against women may be attributed to the fact that in past 15 years the number of women in Delhi's workforce has more than doubled. As a result, women have become more visible in public, and many are dressed in modern Western attire, having chucked traditional clothing.
This would suggest that part of the violence stems from men’s resentment of changing gender roles and the erosion of cultural and traditional norms.
Indeed, as India's economy modernizes, more women pursue higher education, get jobs, marry later in life and have fewer children.
For the millions of Indian men who haven't benefited from the buoyant economy and remain trapped in poverty, the sight of successful, independent women is anathema.
Raj also noted that, as is the case in the U.S. and other Western nations, most Indian rapists are friends, neighbors or even relatives of the victims.
“The vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by an individual known to the victim,” she said.
Citing official data, Raj pointed out only 4 percent of men arrested for rape were strangers to their victims, while the other 96 percent were known to the victims or their families.
“This really belies this belief that rapes have increased because women and girls are more mobile in societies,” she said.