Kolkata: Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee – under fire over the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital – raked up other horrific instances of assault on women in other states.
She referred to the rape of a 20-year-old Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras in 2020 and the rape and barbaric slaughter of a college student in Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district in 2013.
Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress tabled a new bill in the Assembly Tuesday morning to revise and strengthen punishment for rapists and sexual offenders, expressed her condolences to the family of the RG Kar Hospital doctor, whose body was discovered on campus early August 9.
While addressing the assembly, Mamata Banerjee hails state anti-rape Bill as ‘model, historic’. On CBI probe into doctor rape-murder, Mamata said “we want justice from CBI, death by hanging of the guilty.”
“Opposition should ask governor to sign the Bill, it is our responsibility to enact it after that,” the Bengal CM added.
The proposed legislation calls for the death penalty for individuals convicted of rape if their actions result in the victim’s death or leave her in a permanent vegetative state. Furthermore, it mandates life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for those found guilty of rape and gang rape.