Draft ordinance plans death for child rape in J&K

SRINAGAR: The PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir has prepared the draft of an ordinance seeking capital punishment for child rapists. It will be tabled in the next cabinet meeting. “The draft has been prepared.

Its main feature is that capital punishment will be awarded for raping a child below 12 years,” J&K’s law minister Abdul Haq Khan told ET. The law minister also clarified that the ordinance draft has details of various safeguards at the investigation level so that justice is delivered quickly and without any influence.

“A competent officer not below the rank of DSP should investigate the matter. We want to create deterrence, especially after the incidents that happened across the country and in Kathua,” said Khan. He said the state government ordinance was similar to that of the Centre.


“In the next cabinet meeting we will table the draft. Then it will go for approval of the governor and later the government will issue the ordinance,” Khan said.

J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has also reiterated that she is determined to bring in the new law awarding capital punishment to child rapists. “I welcome the decision of the Union Cabinet to bring in the death penalty to those convicted of raping children up to 12 years of age & reiterate my resolve to introduce similar laws in J&K for the expeditious deliverance of justice,” she tweeted.

TUITION CENTRES SHUT
In wake of continuous student protests against the gang rape and murder of an eighty-ear-old girl in Kathua, J&K education and finance Minister Altaf Bukhari has ordered the closure of all private coaching centres across the Valley for three months. He termed the centres as distraction for students.

“We had a meeting with heads of many institutions and we have come to the conclusion that coaching centres are a distraction,” Bukhari told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.