Death penalty for rapists of children below 12 years

New Delhi : The Centre on Saturday approved the ordinance to award death sentence to the rapists of children below the age of 12.

Following a meeting of the Union Cabinet here, the government cleared the amendment in the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

In the wake of the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi had earlier expressed her ministry's intention to amend the POCSO to make provision for death penalty in such cases.

Soon after, the Centre submitted its report while responding to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava in the Supreme Court, seeking maximum sentence of death penalty to those offenders involved in the rape and brutal murder of children between the age group of 0 to 12.