File photo of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. (Getty Images)
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh has prepared a proposal seeking death penalty for rapists.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has given his nod to the plan chalked out by Madhya Pradesh police. The state government will now forward it to the Centre for final approval.
“Police headquarters has prepared perhaps the most stringent proposal for punishing those charged with sexually assaulting women,” said Aruna Mohan Rao, additional director general of police (ADG) from crime against women cell.
The proposal contains harsher punishment from 20 years in jail to death sentence for those who sexually assault girls less than 12 years of age, she said.
Once the Centre approves it, the bill will be introduced in the state Assembly during monsoon session, sources said. Then, it would be forwarded to the President.
The state government also plans to request the Centre to inculcate the said provisions into the Indian Penal Code.
Government sources said the CM approved the stringent laws for curbing crimes against women after a series of measures failed to bring the crime graph down.
Due for Assembly polls in 2018, the BJP government stares at highest number of rape cases in country with National Crime Record Bureau 2015 report putting MP on top in terms of rape cases registered in 2015. The state had recorded 4,391 rapes in the year.