His move for lowering the consent age for sex to 16 years having been overwhelmingly rejected, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Tuesday hit out at his critics saying it was due to the “ignorance of law by some people” and citing that such a provision existed in the 153-year-old Indian Penal Code (IPC) itself.
“The consent age of 16 years was incorporated in IPC in 1860. No one had looked into it (then) but when my ordinance came for correcting this...whole Parliament was against it.
But I brought it to the notice there (that) this law (of 16 years age) was in existence but we have not realised that it was in existence.
“Can we say ignorance of law is not permissible that this country permitted,” Shinde said, a week after the Parliament passed the anti-rape bill with minimum age of 18 as consent for sex. Shinde was speaking at a seminar on police reforms, organized by Assocham.
However, the Minister, while making this assertion, did not mention about Child Marriage Act, which came into force in 2007, and Child Trafficking Act under which the definition of child has been fixed below 18 years.
The Parliamentarians, during the discussion on this crucial issue, wanted a parity between the IPC and other laws that have been enacted later.
Shinde said a rigid law has also been passed to punish a police officer by giving a minimum punishment of two years’ imprisonment if he does not act on complaints of atrocities against women belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. He said policing needs to be reformed keeping in view the present day scenario. “The policing system needs to be upgraded effectively to deal with crime and criminals and to safeguard the interest of one and all,” he said.