Isn't this abuse of Vande Mataram?

As many in India will today be paying tribute to the national song, perhaps someone should tell us how we can do so when in one of our more developed cities a crime so dehumanising has been committed that one recoils with horror.

A teenager rapes an old woman and later kills her and is later joined by two friends who have sex with the corpse. Vande Mataram?

Will putting these children in a remand home (the excuse will be they were on drugs) help? Will they learn any lessons in that crass cocoon? This report appeared on page 15. The shameful acts get space in the back pages. Car insurance, Mother Teresa’s death anniversary (where a young woman is clicking pictures of the mourning nuns!), Goa going the Las Vegas way with 10 new casinos, a politician’s daughter’s financial assets, and the reason why Zidane went head banging…these make it to the front.

Would you not think we need to fight this war on terror?
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The full report: SHOCK AND SHAME

Youths rape, kill 72-yr-old

Chandigarh Police Say 3 Addicts Had Sex With The Corpse As Well

Chandigarh: It’s been quite a while that people have stopped calling Chandigarh safe. But the city, turning increasingly dangerous lately, was still not prepared for what the UT police announced on Tuesday—the rape and murder of a 72-year-old helpless woman by three youths, one of them just 16.

Even the police recoiled in horror. They said there were indications that the youth may have had intercourse with the dead woman.

Sarla Devi was alone when the trio, all drug addicts, barged into her house on Saturday—she lived alone in her Sector 15 residence—and strangled her to death with the intention of robbing her. But three used condoms at the site of the crime indicated that she had been raped too.

Members of the the Special Investigation Team, which arrested a drug addict involved in the ghastly crime, a 16-year-old, said his revelations sent a chill down their spine.

“One of them first raped her and then they killed her in fear that she may make a noise. And then these perverted youth raped her again,’’ a police officer told TOI. But the law is ambiguous on sex with a dead woman, or if it can fall under the ambit of rape.

One of the accused lived in a house just behind that of the victim and knew in detail about her movements. He also was “sure’’ that she lived alone. In need of money for drugs, he soon hatched a plan to kill his neighbour. It was then that his accomplices, Anil and Aman, both 19, and residents of Naya Gaon, came into the picture.

DSP S S Randhawa, who is also SIT in-charge, said jewellry, fixed deposit certificates and an old ATM card that were stolen from the old woman have been recovered from the youth.

SIT sleuths got the first clues when they recovered a polythene bag containing addictive liquid that they used to inhale. It was clear that the crime was the handiwork of drug addicts and those who knew the victim well. They soon got a whiff of “a teenager who was absconding and had gone to his maternal home in Solan’’. His accomplices were with him initially but went their own ways.

The stunned father of the main accused said his entire locality was shocked. “My son should be given appropriate punishment,’’ he said. “His own grandmother is 60 years old. How could he do such a thing?’’