India’s government on Saturday approved the death penalty for child rapists, after the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl and a series of other horrific sexual assaults caused nationwide outrage.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a cabinet meeting to pass the measure Saturday on his return from the Commonwealth summit, a government official told AFP.
Protests have erupted across India in recent days over the rape and killing of the young Muslim girl by a group of Hindu men in Jammu and Kashmir state, increasing pressure on Modi to take action.
The attack sent out the sort of shockwaves that shook the country after the equally horrific gang rape of a Delhi student on a bus in 2012, which made headlines around the world.
The cabinet approved the ordinance amending laws on sexual violence to allow for capital punishment for those convicted of raping children below the age of 12, the official said.
Minimum jail sentences for convicted rapists were also toughened.
“The ordinance will be sent to the president for his consent,” the official said on condition of anonymity. The president’s approval is seen as a formality.
The new decree requires trials involving child victims to be completed in two months after an arrest, unusually speedy for India where the wheels of justice turn slowly.
The order will remain in effect for a period of six months from the president’s approval, or until parliament votes the changes into law.
In recent months, four Indian states have already introduced similar legislation in local parliaments to approve the death penalty for child rapists.
India has the death penalty for the most brutal murders and terror attacks. But the sentences are rarely carried out and are often struck down on appeal by higher courts.
India carried out its last hanging in 2015 of a 1993 Mumbai bombing convict.
