Soon: Woman-friendly sati law

A new law on sati will be easy on the woman who tries to commit the act but tough on family members and others who abet the crime.

Published on: Apr 25, 2006, 01:36:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A new law on sati will be easy on the woman who tries to commit the act but tough on family members and others who abet the crime.

According to the amended Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 — which the government plans to introduce in Parliament in May — a woman who attempts sati will not be chargedsheeted for attempted suicide.

According to senior officials of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the amendment bill is awaiting the Cabinet’s approval. “We expect to introduce the bill in the latter half of the session,” an official said.

The bill was drafted following representations from various women’s organisations saying that the present law — which books the woman for attempted suicide and sentences her to a year in prison — only went on to further harass the victim.

“The woman is usually forced to burn herself. Even after she is saved, instead of rehabilitating her, she is booked for attempted suicide,” an official said.

To further balance the law in favour of the woman, the bill proposes to penalise the immediate family members for sati murder and the village for abetting the crime. “This section can act as a deterrent to sati and will force family members, including children, to worry about the legal implications,” an official said.

The ministry’s changes have the approval of the home ministry and the law ministry. “The home ministry’s approval was required as the act refers to sections of the Indian Penal Code on attempted suicide and related sections,” an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.