Maleeka Bokhari, Parliamentary Secretary for Statute and Justice, announced Friday that the government had deleted a provision allowing for chemical castration of repeat rapists from a criminal law that was just enacted.
The Minister for Law, Farogh Naseem, and Bokhari spoke at a press conference in the Federal Capital, where they declared, “We have modified the criminal law and agreed that the chemical castration clause will be removed.”
Before Wednesday’s joint session of the Parliament passed the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2021, Bokhari claimed that the administration had eliminated the provision allowing for chemical castration.
According to the government official, the decision to discontinue chemical castration was made in response to the Council of Islamic Ideology’s protest (CII).
In her statement, Bokhari stated that the CII had objected to the clause on the grounds that it was “un-Islamic,” pointing out that, according to the constitution, no law can be adopted that goes against the teachings of the Holy Quran and Shariah.
As the parliamentary secretary pointed out, “the PTI-led government has approved historic laws despite all of the delaying tactics employed by the Opposition.”
Of the 33 pieces of legislation that were crushed during the joint session, Bokhari stated that all of them were intended at speeding up the process of justice and making legal proceedings easier for those who had been wronged by the government.
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Bokhari stated that special courts would be established following the approval of the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Bill, 2021, in order to speed the prosecution of rape cases. “An inquiry unit will be established in each area,” says the minister.
She went on to say that investigators who have been trained will be included in the investigation team.
Chemical castration, which is carried out by the use of chemicals and is reversible, can be used as a punishment for certain sex offenses in nations such as Poland, South Korea, the Czech Republic, and some states in the United States, among others.
The non-profit organization War Against Rape estimates that less than 3% of rapists are convicted in Pakistani courts, based on their statistics.
Prime Minister Imran Khan stated last year that he wished to introduce the penalty in response to a national outcry over an increase in crimes and the specific case of a mother of two who was driving along the Lahore Motorway when she was dragged out of her car and raped by two men holding a gun to her head.