Indian president signs ordinance awarding death penalty for child rape

A day after Indian Union Cabinet cleared the ordinance to amend the POCSO act, President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday signed the executive order allowing courts to pronounce the death penalty to those convicted of raping children up to 12 years of age.

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, reports The Times of India.

Earlier on Saturday, the ordinance was cleared by the Union Cabinet headed by PM Narendra Modi.

The ordinance prescribed the minimum punishment in case of rape of women to increase from rigorous imprisonment of 7 years to 10 years, extendable to life imprisonment.

In case of rape of a girl under 16 years, minimum punishment has been increased from 10 years to 20 years, extendable to imprisonment for rest of life, which means imprisonment till that person’s natural life.

Existing provisions of the POCSO Act provide for life imprisonment, though after the Nirbhaya case in 2012 the Centre had introduced the death penalty in cases where a woman either dies or is left in a vegetative state after rape.

The ordinance will now have to be passed by both the Houses of Parliament within six weeks.