PM wrote to justice Verma, promise to take action on recommendations
New Delhi: A week after Justice JS Verma Committee submitted a report to the Union government on women’s safety in the country, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday assured that his government will promptly take up the recommendations.
In a letter to Justice Verma, former Chief Justice of India, Singh thanked him and other two members of the Committee – Justice (retd) Leila Seth and former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanian – for completing within a short period of 30 days the work of the panel, set up in the wake of the brutal gang rape and assault of a 23-year-old here on December 16 last.
The Verma Committee has recommended enhancing punishment to up to 20 years imprisonment for rape and murder and life term for gang rape but refrained from suggesting death penalty to the guilty.
The present statute provides for punishment of imprisonment ranging from seven years to life for rapists. The panel was constituted in the wake of national outrage over the gang rape in a moving bus in south Delhi. The victim died in Singapore hospital on December 29.
