New Delhi, April 20: Sushma Swaraj today said “shock treatment” was needed to tame “perverts and sadists” and called for the anti-rape law to be made more stringent to include death penalty for rape of children.

“These perverts and sadists require shock treatment… Nothing short of death sentence in cases of rape of children and cases involving brutality and barbarity will help,” the leader of the Opposition tweeted.

Sushma also visited AIIMS to meet the family of the five-year-old fighting for life after she was raped and brutalised by a neighbour.

The BJP leader urged home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to convene an all-party meeting to make the anti-rape law more stringent. The Prime Minister should be present at the meeting, she said.

A new anti-rape law was passed by Parliament only last month, in the wake of the Delhi bus gang rape, and provides for death penalty if the victim dies or sinks into coma.

The BJP leader was the only politician who had demanded capital punishment for rape after the December 16 gang rape of a physiotherapy student who eventually died of injuries sustained in the assault.

“I thought barbarity in the Damini case (Damini was one of the names given to the gang rape victim since her identity could not be revealed) was an aberration. But the Delhi child rape case has shown that perversity and sadism is common to these criminals,” she said.

After visiting AIIMS, Sushma said she had seen another five-year-old rape victim. “I saw another five year old girl child in the next room. She is also a rape victim. She was found abandoned in the AIIMS campus,” she tweeted. “She says her father is a rickshawpuller. She misses her mother but does not want to go home.”