Child sex abuse may draw death penalty
POCSO tweaks seek to make the law gender-neutral, increase punishment for child pornography
NEW DELHI: Child sexual assault will be punishable with death sentence under amendments to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, approved by the Union cabinet on Friday at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The amendments seek to make the law genderneutral and sharpen its deterrent edge.
The death penalty will apply to cases of aggravated penetrative sexual assault on children below 12 years of age.
Section 4 of the POCSO Act, which deals with punishment for penetrative sexual assault, now prescribes a sentence that’s not less than seven years in jail and may be extended to life imprisonment as the maximum punishment.
The proposed amendments to the act increase minimum imprisonment to 10 years which may extend to imprisonment for life.
Section 6 of the Act has been amended to read: “Whoever commits aggravated penetrative sexual assault shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than 20 years but which may extend to imprisonment for life which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of that person’s natural life and shall also be liable to fine or with death.”
The death penalty will apply
to cases of aggravated sexual assault, which refers to rape and gang rape.
“In the wake of gruesome and heart-wrenching incidences, there has been a growing demand from the society to arrest the disturbing trend (of child sexual assault) by introducing stringent punishment including death penalty for the rape cases,” the ministry of women and child development said in a proposal to the cabinet, a copy of which has been reviewed by Hindustan Times.
The cabinet approved amendments in sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 15 and 42 of the POCSO Act. “The modification is made to address the need for stringent measures required to deter the rising trend of child sex abuse in the country,”
the cabinet said in a statement. This is an initiative to strengthen the entire POCSO architecture and also enhance it to ensure that medicines or hormones are not be abused to destroy the childhood of innocents, said Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who briefed reporters on the cabinet decisions.
The POCSO Act, 2012, was enacted to protect children from offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography and to safeguard their interests and well-being.
The Act defined a child as any person below 18 years of age. Certain sections of the Act, however, were not gender-neutral and applied only to female victims.