riticizing law enforcers and calling for police reforms, the Justice Verma Committee tasked by the government to suggest stringent laws against sexual violence submitted its recommendations to the Home Ministry.
Though it rejects the demand for introducing the death penalty for rape, the report proposes punishments for a wide range of sexual offenses in its gamut. The panel recognized voyeurism, disrobing, touching, stalking, eve-teasing, acid attacks as offences that are punishable, drawing applause from the women’s groups and citizens many of whom hailed it as a bold document and a big leap forward.
Significantly, the panel introduced ‘breach of command responsibility’ making senior officers of the police and armed forces accountable for sexual crimes committed by their subordinates.
Additionally, it also recognized the discrimination against the lesbians, homosexuals and transgender people calling such acts unconstitutional.
The Committee’s criticism to some of the patriarchal and redundant features in the existing laws is bound to be welcomed by many in India. While expanding the previously narrow definitions of molestation, the panel has also asked for the removal of the archaic expression: “outraging the modesty” of a woman.
The Verma Commission said the punishment for causing death or a permanent vegetative state of the victim shall be rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than 20 years but may be for life in real sense.The report said gang-rape shall be punishable of not less than 20 years and can also go up to life sentence.
A call for the public to send suggestions to the committee generated nearly 80,000 responses. Justice Verma said, “this goes to show the extent of support for Nirbhaya and the extent of anguish nationwide over the dangers India’s women face daily.”
According to the panel, hardly any Indian police chiefs responded to requests for proposals on ways to reduce gender-based violence. Verma called such an attitude “laughable.”
“If they considered this [commission] to be irrelevant, that shows the sense of responsibility they have toward the discharge of their statutory and constitutional duty,” he told reporters.
The three-member committee headed by former Chief Justice of India J S Verma submitted its report to the government a month after it was formed following a national outrage over the brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a Delhi bus on December 16 and her subsequent death from the injuries.
Justice Leila Seth, former Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court, and former Solicitor General of India Gopal Subramanian, are the other two members of the committee.
Justice Verma minced no words when he said “I was shocked” to see the Home Secretary pat the back of the Delhi police commissioner for investigation in the Delhi gang-rape case when he should have ideally asked for apology for failing to protect citizens.
There was nationwide outrage in reaction to this case with people taking to the streests in protest. Many feel that the time had come to revamp laws. The panel acknowledged contributions of the nation’s youth in bringing the crime on the national agenda for change.