With stalking of women assuming menacing proportions, the Union women and child development ministry has proposed a separate penal provision to deal with the offence.
There is no penal provision defining the offence of stalking in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which has often led to serious sexual assaults of women. The WCD has proposed to make the law more stringent and recommended seven-year imprisonment for stalkers, besides levying a stiff penalty.
According to sources, the WCD has proposed to the Union ministry of home affairs that any conduct that causes harassment including “repeatedly following the woman from place to place, repeatedly contacting the woman through mails, fax etc or repeatedly loitering or watching the house or the woman’s workplace” should be considered an offence and dealt with in a stringent manner.
Considering that stalking causes mental trauma to a woman, the WCD feels that the menace “needs to be dealt with as an independent offence than those listed under IPC on sexual harassment of women.”
Following the increasing number of complaints of stalking, the National Commission for Women last year had asked the WCD ministry to view it as a major offence and add a separate section in the IPC, instead of clubbing it with eve-teasing.
It was claimed that the MHA’s proposal to expand the definition of rape does not include stalking. Responding to the MHA proposal, the WCD suggested that a separate penal provision need to be created to deal with stalking.