A bill containing harsher punishments for rapists was passed by India's parliament earlier in March. Karuna Nundy, a leading Supreme Court lawyer, explains the new laws.
Why change the law?
Reacting to the massive protests that followed the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi last December, the government set up a panel headed by a retired judge to recommend legal reform and other ways to reduce sexual violence.
The Justice Verma Committee received 80,000 recommendations, held wide consultations and referred to laws and research from around the world.
Its report gave many women the audacity to hope that freedom from violence and constitutional equality would be reclaimed by and for women.
The new law is a combination of just thinking about gender and existing patriarchal attitudes in society, as well as those ingrained in the colonial Indian Penal Code of 1860.
It also reflects the government's desire to be seen as tough on crimes against women.
So "outraging the modesty of a woman" remains a legitimate legal standard, though some new crimes based on a women's right to bodily integrity and to be free of sexual harassment have also been incorporated.
A clearly defined rule should have been to penalise violent, coercive activity.
Instead, most marital rape is still legal, even the rape of a "married" child, aged between 15 and 18.
If an unmarried girl and boy of about 17 years have consensual intercourse, though, the boy risks being sent to a juvenile home for three years, reported for statutory rape by unhappy parents, unofficial caste-councils, or religious moral police.
