Rape: HS upholds death penalty for repeat offenders

In a significant order, the Bombay High Court Monday upheld the Constitutional validity of the amended section of the Indian Penal Code under which repeat offenders in rape cases can be awarded life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Under an amendment to section 376 E of the IPC, repeat offenders in rape cases faced life imprisonment or a death penalty.

This amendment was made after the national outrage of the brutal gangrape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in Delhi on December 2012 - which led to her death.

The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 19 March 2013, and by the Rajya Sabha on 21 March 2013, which provides for amendment of Indian Penal Code, Indian Evidence Act, and Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 on laws related to sexual offences.

"We are of the opinion that section 376 E of the IPC is not ultra vires to the Constitution and hence need not be quashed in the present case," a division bench comprising justice B P Dharmadhikari and justice Revati Mohite-Dere, said, while dismissing the petitions by three convicts of the Shakti Mill gangrape case.

The three convicts — Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali and Mohammed Salim Ansari - who had been given death penalty in two different cases of rape — one filed by a telephone operator and another by a photojournalist, in 2013.