Amid a nation-wide outrage over the recent spate of rape incidents, the Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday cleared an ordinance to award death sentence to those convicted in rape of minor girls.
Official sources said that the criminal law amendment ordinance seeks to amend the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Evidence Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act to introduce a new provision to sentence convicts of such crimes to death. As per the ordinance, those convicted of committing rape on children up to 12 years can be awarded death penalty.
The ordinance would be now sent to the President for his approval.
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As the POCSO law stands today, the maximum punishment for "aggravated assault" is life in jail. The minimum sentence prescribed is seven years in jail.
After the Nirbhaya case in December 2012, when the criminal laws were amended, a provision of death penalty in case the woman either dies or is left in a "vegetative state" after rape was introduced through an ordinance which later became the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
Earlier, in the wake of the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi had expressed her ministry's intention to amend the POCSO law to make provision for death penalty in such cases.
The government had informed the Supreme Court on Friday that it was actively considering amending the penal law to introduce death penalty to those convicted of sexually abusing children up to 12 years of age.
The latest move is expected to be a face-saver for the government which has been under tremendous pressure over a spike in cases child sexual abuse including the sensational Kathua case and Unnao rape case in Uttar Pradesh.