It is difficult to say whether the bill proposing death penalty for rapists passed in the Bengal Assembly on the initiative of the Mamata government will discourage sexual offenders. There are strong reasons to believe that the main purpose of this bill is more to give a political message that the Mamata government is sensitive towards the crime of rape.
The Bengal government felt the need to send this message because the rape and murder of a female trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College made it clear that the Bengal police and government were not involved in the incident and sensitivity.
The bill, which was hastily passed by the Bengal assembly, states that if the victim dies or goes into a coma in a rape case, the culprit will be awarded the death penalty.
Earlier it was said that in such cases the accused would be hanged within ten days of sentencing but this was not mentioned in the passed bill. One can understand that this is not so because it was not possible.
Death penalty cannot be given without following due process of law. A person can be given death penalty only after all legal options are exhausted. It cannot be ignored that it took eight years to hang the culprits of the Nirbhaya case that shook the country. Due to strict laws in many states, lower courts give death penalty to the criminals in cases of rape and murder, but it is difficult to implement it.
According to a statistic, in the last 20 years, only five criminals have been awarded death sentence in cases of rape and murder. Even though Mamata Banerjee is saying that the Aparajita Women and Child Protection Bill is stricter than the Indian Judiciary Code, the question is whether this law will create an environment in which women feel safe and incidents like the Medical College RG Tax cannot happen?
This cannot be believed because even after the nationwide outrage over the RG Kar Medical College incident, news of rape is coming in every day. This news shows that along with correcting the relevant laws and improving the attitude of the police, the society also needs to be aware. When will the society fulfill its responsibility and what steps are the political parties and governments taking in this direction? These big and sensitive questions are being raised because politics affects the society the most.
