New Delhi: The West Bengal government on Tuesday (September 3) passed a new bill which seeks to impose death penalty in all incidents of rape. State law minister Moloy Ghatak tabled the Aparajita Women, Child (West Bengal Criminal Law Amendment) Bill 2024 in the assembly on Tuesday. The draft copies of the bill were circulated among MLAs on Monday.
The bill seeks to amend the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which replaced the Indian Penal Code, and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which replaced the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), as well as parts of the POCSO Act of 2012 and introduce the death penalty in several types of sexual assault cases regardless of the victim’s age, the Times of India reported.
For rape cases, BNS Section 64 currently provides for prison terms varying from 10 years to life imprisonment while Section 66 stipulates death penalty for rape and murder or where survivors exist in a vegetative state. Section 66 also allows for a 20-year prison term or life imprisonment. The Aparajita Bill seeks to impose capital punishment in all these cases. The bill will also seek death for gang rapes [BNS Section 70(1)], the paper reported.
The new bill also seeks to increase prison terms, from two years according to BNS to 3-5 years, for disclosing a rape survivor’s identity. According to the report, the bill proposes to make “printing or publishing any matter regarding court proceedings without permission” punishable with three to five years in jail, from the maximum two years in BNS.
The West Bengal government’s bill also seeks to amend BNSS provisions to speed up rape probes and trials. The BNSS currently has a deadline of two months for such cases, which, the Aparajita Bill, proposes to reduce to three weeks along with an additional 15 days if required. The bill says trials in all sex crimes and acid attacks have to be completed within 30 days.
It also seeks the creation of an ‘Aparajita Task Force’, led by a deputy superintendent of police, to handle rape and sexual offence cases.
However, the bill still needs the governor’s as well as the president’s assent. Looking at precedence, the Andhra Pradesh Disha Bill of 2019 and the Maharashtra Shakti Bill of 2020, which are similar to the Aparajita Bill, were passed unanimously by the respective state legislatures but neither has got presidential assent till date, the report said.
Civil rights bodies have called the West Bengal government’s move to demand death penalty for rape as superficial. People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in a statement last week said that “[this] is a cynical and politically motivated attempt by Mamata Banerjee to deflect attention from the negligence and criminal culpability of her government in the rape and murder of the 31-year-old trainee medic at Kolkata’s state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.”
The rights body said that instead of taking concrete steps to ensure women’s safety, the West Bengal government was trying to grab headlines with this move that could have serious implications for human rights in the country.
The civil rights body also slammed the “unserious and absurd proposals” made by the Banerjee government in response to the RG Kar case.
