Death penalty to juvenile age: the Verma Committee approach

Gopal Subramaniam, senior advocate at the Supreme Court, who was a part of the Verma Committe, spoke t_o Rajdeep Sardesai_ last evening to explain how they approached writing the report.

Subramaniam explained that there were three ways in which the report aimed to address violence against women.

One, the committee felt a strong need to constitutionally affirm equality in daily life;

Two, they were keen to acknowledge the kind of stereotyping that has taken place due to the lack of main streaming across India, especially in attitudes;

Third and most important - punishment: they wanted to push through a more stringent than available sentence (14 years), and added some new offences that are precursors to rape, that do take place.

Interestingly, in the matter of death penalty that has occupied much of media and political discourse in the past month, Subramaniam explained that they avoided it because of the arbitrariness of using it and the fact that rarest of the rare took care of the need to use it.

Commenting of the issue of lowering the age of juveniles from 18 to 16, he said that the condition of the have-nots hit the committee in the solar plexus. “Have we done enough for the haven-nots who are juveniles and that question hit us, the condition of juvenile homes, are like ghettos. Then suddenly to say lower the age to 18 to 16 is not morally not justified.”