The time has come for criminal justice system to mould a survivor-centric approach in dealing with cases of sexual violence, especially for victims of child abuse for whom the trauma will scar them for life, the Supreme Court observed.
A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and A.M. Sapre said the criminal justice system needed significant reforms to institutionalise a more sympathetic approach in which the sexual abuse survivor was the focus.
“It would be adding insult to injury to tell a woman that her rape claims will not be believed unless it is corroborated in material particulars,” the court observed in a recent judgment.
The court was restoring the conviction of a man found guilty of raping his nine-year old niece in 2009. He was sent to jail for 12 years.
The court found, in this case, positive proof and a credible sequence of events linking the man to the crime.
The verdict, based on the appeal filed by the Himachal Pradesh government, dismissed the defence’s argument that there was a delay in filing the FIR in the rape case, which they claimed was fabricated.
“It is not easy to lodge a complaint of this nature exposing the prosecutrix [victim] to the risk of social stigma which unfortunately still prevails in our society,” the court responded. Moreover, it added that “a decision to lodge FIR becomes more difficult and harder when the accused happens to be a family member.”
Justices Sikri and Sapre also observed that in many cases rape by family members was not reported to the police by the victim or her immediate family, fearing social stigma.
