India: Lawmakers Vote to Lower Age for Trying Some Teenagers as Adults

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/world/asia/india-lawmakers-vote-to-lower-age-for-trying-some-teenagers-as-adults.html

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Indian lawmakers voted Tuesday to lower to 16 from 18 the age at which a person could be tried as an adult for crimes like murder, rape, kidnapping and acid attacks in the wake of a public outcry over the release of one of the attackers in a fatal 2012 gang rape. The attacker was 17 when he and five other men brutally raped a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi, the Indian capital. She later died in a hospital. The young man served the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home and was released on Sunday. Four men convicted of rape and murder were sentenced to death and are appealing their sentences in India’s top court. A fifth man died in prison. The bill needs the president’s signature before it becomes a law.