On Sunday, nation President Ram Nath Kovind gave assent to the Criminal Law Ordinance, 2018. It also allows courts to award the death penalty to those convicted of raping children below 12 years of age. The Ordinance was approved by the Cabinet. The Ordinance will now have to be ratified by both houses of Parliament within six weeks.

The Ordinance recommends a minimum of 20 years’ imprisonment or imprisonment for rest of life and the maximum of death for the rape of girls under age of 12. In this case of gang rape of a girl below 12 years, the minimum punishment will be imprisonment for the “rest of life” and the maximum will be the death sentence to convicted. For the offence of rape, of those above 16, minimum punishment has been increased from exact imprisonment of 7 years to 10 years, “extendable to life imprisonment”.

The proposed Ordinance also removes the provision for the anticipatory bail for those of raping or gang-raping a child under the age of 16. “It has also been provided that court has to give a notice of 15 days to the public prosecutor and the representative of the victim before deciding bail applications in case of rape of a girl under 16 years of age,” the government said in a statement. The proposed amendment seeks to amend the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Evidence Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act to introduce a new provision to sentence convicts of such crimes to death.