Parliament Amends Penal Code, Increases Penalties For Bodily Injury

Kaloyan Vassev

Snapshot of Parliament's Monday sitting (BTA Photo)

Sofia,

07.08.2023 19:07

(BTA)

On Monday Parliament adopted at first reading two bills to amend the Penal Code, introducing increased penalties for bodily harm.

At the beginning of last week, after outrage regarding a case of an injured 18-year-old girl from Stara Zagora, the parliamentary groups of GERB-UDF, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms introduced two joint bills - for changes to the Penal Code and the the Protection Against Domestic Violence Act. They were adopted with 178 votes.

For the second bill - that of Vazrazhdane, 101 MPs were in favour, 75 were against, two abstained.

The bill of GERB-UDF, CC-DB and MRF provides for an increase in the amount of imprisonment for causing medium bodily injury from six to eight years. The possibility of probation for trivial bodily injury in the form of disorder of health is abolished, outside the cases under Articles 128 and 129 of the Penal Code (respectively grievous and medium bodily injury). Higher fines for trivial bodily injury in the form of pain and suffering between BGN 500 and 1000 have been set, the penalty was previously BGN 100 to 300.

Vazrazhdane's bill provides for the introduction of a minimum threshold of three months' imprisonment for causing trivial bodily injury. Another two propositions in that bill are not to abolish probation for causing trivial bodily injury in the form of health disorder and that the definition of an offence committed "in the context of domestic violence" should provide that it must have been committed at least once before the indictment.

/KK/