Death returns for rapists

A parliamentary panel that scrutinised the criminal law (amendment) bill, 2012 and the ordinance promulgated by the government last month with regard to safety of women prescribed death sentence for extreme rape cases and also overturned Justice Verma panel recommendation on “marital rape”.  The parliamentary standing committee on home also vetoed judicial panel’s recommendation on removal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the statute, but found a via-media by incorporating sexual offences committed by uniformed personnel in Section 376 (2).

The new clause says, the member of armed forces in the area by virtue of deployment by the central or a state government committing sexual act shall face a rigorous imprisonment of not less than 10 years but may be extended for life with fine.

The committee chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, a former BJP chief said a wrong impression was created that armed forces were exempted from any action for committing the sexual assaults.  On the Verma panel's recommendation that the prior sanction for trial in case of offences by the armed forces, Naidu said the home secretary who appeared before the committee clarified that no permission is required in such cases.

The two Left party members of the panel gave a note of dissent on 14 counts, expressing dissatisfaction the way Justice Verma committee recommendations have been diluted. The two members D. Raja and Prasanta Chatterjee said adopting a gender neutral definition of sexual assault was also unjust and trivialises the large increase in the number of rapes by men.

The panel pointed out a flaw in the ordinance dropping the word "political" from Section 376(2) and asked the government not to drop it. The relevant section prescribes punishment to any person "being in a position of economic or social or political dominance commits sexual assault on a person under such dominance." Retaining the section will ensure the political bosses do not exploit the lady subordinates, the report stressed.

Naidu said  government will include the committee recommendations while bringing a new bill in the current Parliament session to replace the ordinance.  The committee has recommended major changes in the bill like compensation to the victims, mandatory video-recording of the evidence, better portrayal of woman in the media, moral education, stern punishment to repeat offenders and inclusion of the forced and induced prostitution in the ambit of the sexual exploitation. It also wanted that the concentrated acid's sale be regulated only on the certificate of a competent authority to take care of the acid attacks on girls on the rise.

The panel also recommended making ragging in educational institutions a cognisable offence with punishment, particularly where it take the overtones of sexual harassment of assault. Naidu said two other major recommendations are to hold a higher officer responsible if he does not take timely action on the knowledge of crime committed by the subordinate and such omission must be recorded in his ACR.

As regards the repeat offenders, the committee noted that there is no system to keep a watch on them despite a study pointing out that majority of the offenders had committed a sex crime earlier and escaped notice of police authorities and were roaming freely. It wanted a suitable mechanism developed to keep a watch on habitual and repeat sex offenders. It also recommended that names of the convicted persons even in the first offence should be publicised for information of public and the Central Crime Records Bureau as well as the state crime record bureaus should include such data in their records.