n a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at going the extra mile for women’s safety and almost two years after the directions of a specially-constituted committee to this effect, the Delhi Police have finally been given the go-ahead to undertake a socio-psychological study related to sexual crime perpetrated against women.
Aimed at countering “the alarming increase in rape cases in the national Capital” with the help of civil society bodies and psychology experts, the study, according to a senior Delhi Police official, had been in the pipeline since being recommended in an expansive report submitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) by the Justice Usha Mehra Commission which had been constituted in the wake of the December 16 gang-rape of 2012.
The study seeks “to understand the psychology and motivations of a rape accused in order to develop a suitable strategy to combat such inclinations” and, interestingly, comes days after the Aam Aadmi Party-led (AAP) Delhi government passed a resolution to set up an inquiry commission empowered to look into cases of crime against women and to recommended changes to existing laws, if required.
A senior police officer, however, brushed aside the obvious political undertones of the study attributing it to a statistics-triggered wake-up call for both the MHA and the police.
The official added that the necessity of such a psychoanalysis-based study had been underlined by the recent arrest of a 26-year-old man, who admitted to have executed dozens of sexual offences followed by the murders of children across the national capital region (NCR) over the last decade, in outer Delhi last month. “As far as we are concerned, the study was in the works at least since mid-2013 when the Usha Mehra Commission submitted its findings; there were certain technical lacunae which have now been overcome,” said the official.
According to a senior official privy to the operational details of the project, it would begin with a psychoanalytical-profiling exercise of a minimum sample size of a hundred accused or those convicted of sexual crime, in addition to interviews of an equal number of survivors and police officials associated with investigations in such cases. The main outlines of the project would include determining the inherited constitution of personality the development of the accused in sexual crime by events in early childhood and examining the behaviour of the accused over puberty and early adulthood leading up to the incident in addition to the conflict between conscious and unconscious material that result in “mental disturbance”.
“The findings of the study, once conducted, will be used to assess the factors with respect to causes of rape, capturing patterns and trends of such incidents and the specification of procedures and the development of templates so that the study may be carried out periodically in the future,” the officer said adding that it would also seek recommendations specifically detailing areas that needed any amendments of police rules when handling such cases.
the necessity of such a study had been underlined by recent arrest of a 26-year-old man
