The Legislative Assembly passed the AP Disha (Special Courts for Specified Offences against Women and Children) Bill, 2020, on Thursday.
It facilitates faster completion of trial and handing out of punishment in 21 days, for which special courts are proposed to be constituted. Already, 18 Disha police stations and eight POCSO courts were set up to exclusively deal with the crimes against women and children.
Moving the Bill, Home Minister M. Sucharitha said the government was firmly committed to awarding stringent punishment to those convicted of rape.
Three persons were sentenced to death for raping / murdering girls in the recent months in Chittoor, Nellore and Krishna (Vijayawada) districts. The person convicted of raping and killing a girl in Chittoor was given capital punishment in just five months.
Once the special courts were established after the Bill gets the Central clearance, the State government would be well positioned to act with the desired speed against those ruining the lives of unsuspecting women and children.
Forensic labs
The Minister further said that charge-sheets were filed in one week in 390 cases registered by the Disha police stations. Forensic labs were being set up in Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Mangalagiri in Guntur district to help in building up the criminal cases.
As the TDP MLAs questioned why the Bill was returned by the Central government in the first instance, after the Home Minister made her statement and when the House was deliberating on the AP Land Titling Bill, 2020, Speaker Thammineni Seetharam turned down their request to speak and advised them to go through the salient features of the Bill, prompting them to walk out in protest.
