Srinagar,
National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Sunday demanded death penalty for those involved in the rape of children and said a special legislative session should be held to discuss the formulation of a law.

Farooq, who chaired a meeting of the NC’s provincial committee at the party headquarters here, expressed “anguish, grief and pain at the heart-rending and gruesome tragedy in Kathua”, where a minor girl was gang-raped and murdered in January this year.

The NC president, who is also the former Chief Minister, sought the “strictest, most exemplary punishment for the culprits”. “The party demands a special legislative session so that it could, as announced earlier, propose a Bill mandating death penalty for such heinous crimes against children,” he said.

Farooq said the gruesome rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl from Rasana village in Kathua was “not an isolated, spontaneous crime but the manifestation of a deeply repugnant and repressive politics” against the Gujjar-Bakerwal communities.

“The hardworking, peaceful and harmonious Gujjar and Bakerwal communities have been at the receiving end of threats and intimidation ever since the present political dispensation came to power,” he said.

“The PDP-BJP alliance has left no stone unturned to divide the people of the state along regional and religious lines to seek their own specific political dividends,” the NC president said.

Farooq said the BJP “continues to pit” the people of Jammu against “their brothers and sisters in Kashmir”.