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Kolkata rape-murder case: Why victim’s counsel thinks Bengal's anti-rape bill is ‘absolutely useless’
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, a CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP claimed that the Aparajita bill is a superficial measure.
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, the counsel for the family of the murdered trainee doctor, on Wednesday called West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's anti-rape bill “absolutely useless,” saying it is more focused on confronting the central government than on genuinely addressing the issue of sexual violence.
Bhattacharya, a CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP, claimed that the Aparajita bill is just a superficial measure and an effort to distract from the core issue.
He said the government has legislative power to enact a law and accordingly it brought a bill, but it is absolutely useless.
“No agency can complete an investigation within a limited period, go for trial and finish it in a certain time. The bill is intended to provide an opportunity to fight against the Centre as it is likely not to be approved by the President,” Bhattacharya added.
The West Bengal assembly on Tuesday unanimously cleared the stringent new bill that sought to make the death penalty mandatory in cases involving rape and murder, setting the stage for a protracted political face-off against the backdrop of the grisly death of a junior doctor in Kolkata last month that has sparked sweeping protests.
Introduced by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2024, sought to change several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). The punishment for rape, gang rape acid attacks, and repeat offenders is proposed to be imprisonment for the remainder of the convict’s life.
Under BNS, if rape results in the victim’s death or leaves her in a persistent vegetative state, the death penalty is only one of the punishments besides a life term or a minimum sentence of 20 years in jail.
For rape and murder, the proposed punishment is death. For revealing the identity of the victim, a jail term between three and five years was proposed.
With ANI inputs
