By Rana Ajit

New Delhi, Sep 28 (IANS) A lawmakers' panel is to examine this week a bill that seeks to provide the death penalty to anyone convicted of hijacking an aircraft.

The panel, headed by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury, will begin studying the Anti-Hijacking (Amendment) Bill, 2010, from Thursday when Civil Aviation Secretary M. Madhavan Nambiar will apprise the MPs about various features of the proposed legislation.

Later, the 31-member parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture is likely to summon other officials from the security establishment, a parliament official told the IANS.

The bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel Aug 20 after which the house referred it to the parliamentary panel.

Besides providing the death penalty to those convicted of hijacking an aircraft, it also seeks a definition of the offence.

Amending the definition of hijacking an aircraft in the Anti-Hijacking Act, 1982, the 2010 bill widens the ambit of the offence.

Section 4 of the 1982 law provides for life imprisonment and fine as the maximum punishment for hijacking an aircraft, but the proposed legislation would make it punishable with death.

"Whoever commits the offence of hijacking shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life and shall also be liable to fine," says the bill.

The statement of objects and reasons for the bill shows that the government has taken an unduly long time, nearly a decade, in initiating steps to provide for the death penalty for plane hijackers.

"The hijacking incidents which have taken place in the recent past including the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight No. IC-814 (from Kathmandu to New Delhi) in 1999 and the hijacking incidents in the US Sep 11, 2001, have shown that civilian aircraft were hijacked and used as missiles for causing mass destruction," says the statement.

"Subsequent attempts worldwide to hijack aircraft and the threat by the outlawed groups or organisations have necessitated a fresh and thorough examination of the preparedness of all concerned to face such exigencies," it says.

"It has, therefore, become necessary to reassess the strengths and weaknesses of the existing strategies for handling such exigencies," it says.

It warned that "the present law had insufficient penalties to deal with these new situations and is not deterrent enough to prospective offenders".

It is, therefore, necessary to make various provisions more comprehensive to cover all aspects and kinds of hijacking.