Castration as punishment for rapists dropped after ‘objection’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has removed a clause from a new criminal law that had allowed chemical castration as a possible punishment for serial rapists, a government official said on Friday.

“We have amended the criminal law, and decided that the chemical castration clause will be taken out,” Maleeka Bukhari, parliamentary secretary on law, told a news conference in Islamabad.

She said the decision was taken ater the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a state-run body that interprets laws from an Islamic perspective, found chemical castration un-islamic.

The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan hurriedly passed nearly three dozens laws in a joint session of the parliament on Wednesday, including the anti-rape criminal law.

Chemical castration, which is carried out by the use of drugs and is reversible, can be a punishment for some sex crimes in countries including Poland, South Korea, the Czech Republic and some US states.

Imran said last year he wanted to introduce the penalty amid a national outcry over increasing offences and the specific case of a mother of two driving along a major highway who was dragged out of her car and raped by two men at gunpoint.

Fewer than 3% of rapists are convicted in courts in Pakistan, according to the non-profit organisation, War Against Rape.

Earlier on Wednesday, the government had backed dozens of bills in a hurry, and some local media incorrectly reported that the castration clause was approved. Rights group Amnesty International promptly denounced the bill in a statement, saying it was a “cruel and retrograde step.”

Bukhari said such punishment would also violate the constitution and added that the law minister, Farogh Naseem, had also suggested the clause be excluded.

She did not explain why the government waited for two days to clarify that the drat clause was dropped, especially in light of widely published but incorrect media reports that it had passed.