Alarming time ahead for girl child in Odisha! A girl child in Odisha in a short span of three years has become 400 times more vulnerable to ghastly crimes like rape.
Sample this: In 2012, only a mere 13 per cent of total rape victims were children. But in 2015 a whopping 47 per cent of rape victims in Odisha were children below 18 years. Moreover, when rapes overall in State has shown a rise of over 54 per cent during 2012 – 2015, rapes of girl child has shown an elephantine growth of a shocking 448 per cent during the same period. Such a damning trend taking roots fast in Odisha has been mirrored on by the 2015 Crime in India report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released recently. According to NCRB, girl child rapes in Odisha in 2015 have been a whopping 1,052 against mere 192 in 2012.
Worrying enough is when the crime rate (rape incidences per lakh women) of rapes in Odisha had inched up from around 7 in 2012 to 10.8 in 2015, the rate in case of child rapes zoomed faster to around 7.5 in 2015 against a meagre 1.4 in 2012. Significantly, Odisha stands out alone in country by exhibiting such a menacing growth in child rapes.
Child rapes in Odisha didn’t follow the urban-rural divide. The vice acutely grips the villages, towns and cities alike. For social watchers, when fast opening up of society and growing perversity in young minds play havoc with girl children; lack of faster trial and poor conviction of perpetrators is proving the double whammy. The number of cases pending has grown nearly three-fold to over 1,500 in 2015 from around 543 in 2012. The worse story is conviction rate here dipped to around 13 per cent from a modest 23 per cent in 2012.
Senior advocates call this dangerous as prolonged trial could lead to acquittal of convicts, because this gives elbow room for the accused party to influence the witnesses thereby making them turn hostile. The Government has to fix a time-frame of 6 months – 1 year for trial and disposal of cases with regard to crimes like rapes, they observed.
Incidentally, case studies here reveal that one of the major reasons for delay in trial is non-cooperation/non-attendance of witnesses. Poor conviction in child rape cases confuses legal fraternity as the usual defence mounted by accused on victim of having consensual sex could not sustain in court of law. Child rights activists also blame police for improper and delayed investigation. However, the police side of the story is delayed reporting by affected parties prove a handicap in ensuring swift and proper investigation. Medical evidence is a crucial piece of information in establishing the case in a court of law and the first 48-hr is most crucial in detection and conduction of medical test of the rape victim, observed a very high-ranking official in State Crime Branch.