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NCW opens debate on death for rapists

The National Commission for Women has launched a nation-wide project to review the laws on rape.

The month-long project would culminate in a national workshop in New Delhi on March 10. Representatives of women's groups, legal experts and members of state women commissions and women and child departments would attend it, sources said. The workshop would consider the various suggestions made during the debate and make the necessary recommendations to the government.

Stressing the need for a wider debate on the issue, sources said the Commission requests all citizens to give their views to their respective state women's commission or the women and child department.

As part of the effort, the Delhi Commission for Women will hold a day-long workshop on Friday on 'Rape victims: networking for a supportive infrastructure'. Union Home Minister L K Advani would inaugurate it.

In fact, it was Advani who had set the debate rolling a few months ago when he announced his government favoured amending the criminal procedural code to provide for death sentence to rape convicts.

Advani's announcement had evoked a mixed response from women activists and legal experts, many of whom felt that stricter implementation of existing laws and procedures would be more effective in checking the heinous crime than the introduction of death penalty.

''With conviction rates being a mere 10 per cent and cases dragging for years before judges, and prosecutors who often adopt the most insensitive attitude, the introduction of death penalty would remain an exercise only on paper,'' Mahila Dakshata Samiti general secretary Ranjana Kumari said.

The NCW too expressed a similar view with member Sayeeda Hameed stressing that more could be achieved by time-bound trials and sensitisation of the police and government machinery to the trauma of rape victims.

Among the various issues on which the NCW has asked for comments are:

*To consider recommendation of death penalty to those accused of rape.

*Making the age of consent in rape laws 18 years to bring it in uniformity with the Child Marriage Restraint Act.

*Review of the definition of rape

*Reduction of procedural delays, and whether the procedure should be specified within the statute

*Whether section 155 (iv) of the Indian Evidence Act, which permits raking up the past behaviour of the victim, should be amended or deleted altogether

*Whether exception to section 375 of the Indian Penal Code defining rape should be deleted

*Compensation to rape victims and need for statutory provision for this

*Whether provisions for counselling/legal aid should be made mandatory under the law

*Recommendation for increased punishment in cases where an accused suffering from HIV infection knowingly infects the victim as a result of rape.

UNI

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