india

Updated: Feb 13, 2018 07:27 IST

The government is considering crucial changes in criminal law that will allow for the confiscation of the property of NRI men for deserting their wives and not responding to repeated notices issued to them, Union women and child development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi said on Monday.

The WCD ministry is also writing to the Union home ministry (MHA) to indefinitely increase the time limit for reporting cases of child sexual abuse including molestation from the current rule that says this has to be done within three years of commission of the offence, as first reported by Hindustan Times on February 1.

WCD secretary Rakesh Srivastava said the ministry has sought an amendment in the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) that will allow a summons hosted on the website of ministry of external affairs (MEA) to be treated as “deemed to have been served.”

“If three such notices have been served and the person does not appear, it will be assumed that he is evading summons and will be treated as an absconder. The enforcement agencies will be authorised to attach the property of such persons and their families. The MEA has already written to MHA proposing the changes to CrPC ,” Srivastava said at a press conference.

Currently, a woman has to file a complaint with police, which write to embassies. The embassy then tries to serve the summons.

Recommendations suggesting these changes were suggested by an inter-ministerial panel headed by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to review the legal and regulatory challenges faced by women deserted by NRI men. “The change in law will ensure that the person appears before the law enforcement agencies,” Srivastava said.

Separately, Gandhi took up the issue of increasing the statute if limitations on child abuse after a woman of Indian origin from Canada met her last month and narrated how she had been abused when she was a child.