Senate approves public hanging of child rapists

Criminal Laws amendment bill 2020, which seeks the public hanging of child rapists, has been approved by the Senate’s standing committee on the interior, today. The bill amends Section 376 of Pakistan’s penal code and also fetches light on other rape relating crimes shadowing the country.

Criminal Laws Amendment Bill, 2020 that demands public hanging of child rapists, was put forward by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Javed Abbasi. As stated by senator Abbasi, Leader of the House in the Senate Dr. Shahzad Waseem had voted against the application and walked out, as he proposed a similar implementation through ordinance was in works by the government.

However, the bill was still accepted by the parliament committee, ensuring the government’s ordinance to be clubbed with the bill on grounds during the stage of its consideration.

Furthermore, the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill 2020 requests high courts to conduct the trial of sexual offences against children and set a time frame of 30 days for completion of the trial and two months for adjudicating upon the appeals by the Supreme Court.

Hence, the bill if transformed into a government act will turn down all type of compromises by the families of the victims, promising a death sentence through public hanging at all costs.

Objectives of the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill 2020

The objectives and reasons of ‘hanging of child rapists’ bill reads:

“Rape is a heinous crime; an act of violence that ruins the lives of victims. In Pakistan, rape cases are reported and registered; however, conviction rates of the accused are abysmally low. Recent events relating to sexual abuse and rape throughout the country, particularly against children, have necessitated that tough punishments should be meted out to perpetrators.

“Current penalties are less compared to the magnitude of the crime. The bill aims to increase the punishment of rape as one of the deterrent to this heinous crime.”

Moreover, the Criminal Laws amendment bill 2020 also amends Section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code as PPC Section 376(1) which captions,

“Whoever commits [child sexual abuse] be punished with death or imprisonment for life without parole till death and shall also be liable to fine.”

In addition to this, the bill also brings alterations to Section 377 of Pakistan penal code. Here to mention, the modifications precisely acknowledges male rape, bringing the highly disregarded subject of boys’ abuse to the surface. It reads,

“Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any boy under 18 years of age shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life without parole till death and shall also be liable to fine.”

Besides public hanging of child rapists, another atrocious misconduct, which is dead bodies’ abuse, was also brought into consideration at senate today. Mr. Rehman Malik, Chairman of the committee and former interior minister who presided over the meeting said that “reports of cases of raping human corpse were heart-wrenching and such criminals should be dealt with sternly.” He said there was a dire need to make a law which could deter such offenders.

Hence, Mr. Malik directed that all graveyards across the country should have boundary walls, monitoring system and CCTV cameras so that dignity and respect of human corpses could be ensured.

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