Why is it in the news?
-
Members of the Lok Sabha unanimously passed a bill providing for the death penalty for aggravated sexual assault on children.
-
The Bill amends the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
-
The Act seeks to protect children from offences such as sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography.
Key provisions of the Bill
-
Penetrative sexual assault:
-
The Bill increases the minimum punishment from seven years to ten years for penetrative sexual assault.
-
It further adds that if a person commits penetrative sexual assault on a child below the age of 16 years, he will be punishable with imprisonment between 20 years to life, with a fine.
-
Aggravated penetrative sexual assault:
-
These include cases when a police officer, a member of the armed forces, or a public servant commits penetrative sexual assault on a child.
-
It also covers cases where the offender is a relative of the child, or if the assault injures the sexual organs of the child or the child becomes pregnant, among others.
-
The Bill adds two more grounds to the definition of aggravated penetrative sexual assault. These include:
(i) assault resulting in death of child.
(ii) assault committed during a natural calamity, or in any similar situations of violence.
-
Currently, the punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault is imprisonment between 10 years to life, and a fine.
-
The Bill increases the minimum punishment from ten years to 20 years, and the maximum punishment to death penalty.
-
Pornographic purposes:
-
The Bill defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a child including photograph, video, digital or computer generated image indistinguishable from an actual child.
-
Storage of pornographic material:
-
The Act penalises storage of pornographic material for commercial purposes with a punishment of up to three years, or a fine, or both.
-
The Bill amends this to provide that the punishment can be imprisonment between three to five years, or a fine, or both.
-
In addition, the Bill adds two other offences for storage of pornographic material involving children. These include:
(i) failing to destroy, or delete, or report pornographic material involving a child.
(ii) transmitting, displaying, distributing such material except for the purpose of reporting it.a
Source
The Hindu, PRS.