Parliament approves bill seeking death for terror strikes on oil pipelines
21 Dec 2011
The Parliament has approved amendments to the oil pipelines Act to make acts of terrorism that seek to destroy oil and gas pipelines in the country, punishable by a maximum of death sentence and a minimum 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
The Rajya Sabha today passed the Petroleum and Minerals Pipelines (Acquisition of Right of User in Land) Amendment Bill, 2010, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha.
The punishment "may extend to imprisonment for life or death" in case the act of sabotage is dangerous and is likely to cause death of any other person, the amendment bill states.
The act had earlier provided for a jail term of one to three years' for acts of sabotage and pilferage.
A tightening of the law has been necessitated because the existing sections in the 1962 Act did not contain adequate provisions to prevent such incidents, minister of state for petroleum and natural gas R P N Singh, said.
The minister, however, said "this will apply only for mafias and saboteurs."
Meanwhile, the government has created a separate cell for combating of terrorist funding (CFT Cell) and a Terror Funding Fake Currency Cell (TFFC) within the national Investigation Agency (NIA), which looks into terror funding through fake currencies.
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