The National Assembly on Wednesday passed "The Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Bill, 2019" - a bill aimed at raising alert, response and recovery of missing and abducted children - with a majority vote, days after it sailed through the Senate.
As the bill has been passed from both houses of the parliament - the National Assembly and the Senate - it now requires President of Pakistan's assent to become a law.
The bill named after nine-year-old, Zainab Ansari, who was murdered after being raped in Kasur in 2018, was first tabled by Human Rights Minister Dr Shireen Mazari in June last year after multiple cases of horrific crimes against children emerged, mainly from Kasur.
The bill, which was first passed by the National Assembly in January this year, was approved by the Senate last week with slight amendments including expanding the ambit of the bill to the entire country, which was earlier limited to Islamabad.
The bill was moved in the House by Dr Mazari, and was passed by an overwhelming majority through a voice vote except opposition by Jamaat-e-Islami as Mualana Abdul Akbar Chitrali opposed the bill, saying his party was not given an ample time to submit its amendments.
This angered Dr Mazari, who said that Jamaat-e-Islami had no contribution in the passage of the bill, adding Maulana Chitrali had not made suggestion at any stage whatsoever and was making a hue and cry when the bill was set to be passed.
Maulana Chitrali kept shouting "no" when the National Assembly speaker started clause by clause reading during the voting process and then when the bill was put to the House for voice vote as a whole.
After the passage of the bill, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan told Chitrali that he could still move amendments if he wanted to even after the bill had been passed.
According to the bill - which is set to become a law after assent of the president - under Section 364-A of the PPC, a person who abducts a child under the age of 14 "in order that such [child] may be murdered or subjected to grievous hurt, or slavery, or to the lust of any person [...] shall be punished with death or with imprisonment for life or with rigorous imprisonment for a term, which may extend to 14 years and shall not be less than seven years".
A helpline will also be set up to report missing children, while the government will establish the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Agency (ZARRA) to issue an alert for a missing child.
This agency will be led by a director general, who will be appointed by the prime minister after public advertisement.
ZARRA will coordinate with all relevant federal and provincial authorities and law enforcement agencies, and maintain an online database of all children reported missing or abducted with their current status.
The police will inform ZARRA about an incident of a child missing or abducted within two hours of receiving such a report, and if the agency directly receives information of a child going missing or having been abducted, it will inform the relevant police station immediately.
According to the bill, upon receiving information that a child is missing, the officer in-charge of the police station will reduce the same into writing, in the same manner as prescribed for a cognisable offence under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), and will be mandated to start an investigation of the case, and recover the missing child.
The provisions of the CrPC will apply to the proceedings carried out under the Zainab Alert Bill, except in case of juvenile suspects who will be dealt with under the Juvenile Justice System Act, 2018.
But under the bill's provisions, the police will be bound to register an FIR within two hours of a child being reported missing by their parents.
The police officials failing to comply with this provision will be punished with imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of Rs 100, 000.
According to the bill, special courts will be bound to decide sexual abuse cases involving children under the age of 18 within three months.
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