Only reforms can make judiciary and police, the two essential components of justice delivery system, accountable. However, as rapes are not just law & order issue but also a social, economical and psychological problem, let the society bear the burden of rehabilitation of rape victims
Delhi has gained its nickname as an incorrigible rape city. Since Nirbhaya two years ago, there have been innumerable cases of sexual assault on women in the national Capital. But because of alleged false cases and victims’ low social status, the cases do not find the desired attention.It is only recently when an Uber cabbie raped his passenger in his car that Delhi woke up from its slumber and vent out the anger against the cavalier attitude of police. Rape cases give political parties an opportunity to indulge in a slanging match. But the irony of the fact is that whether Delhi was ruled by the Congress, the AAP or the BJP, there is never an abatement in the number of rape cases. No Government wants itself to be defamed with such incidences, especially at the time of elections, therefore, it is intriguing why the ruling parties failed to do the needful.
Judicial failure
The first question that arises here is why the Uber rapist cabbie, Shiv Kumar Yadav, was acquitted in the 2011 rape case after merely spending a few months in jail. The answer is not simple. Yes, the complainant did not turn up in court to pursue her case, but the actual answer lies in the fact that no woman wants to fight her case for a long time as each hearing progressively forces upon her the social stigma attached to a rape victim. The previous victim of Yadav pursued her case for more than six months but in vain. Victims cannot be expected to spend years in seeking justice, especially after their marriage. Delhi is a cosmopolitan city where a lot of girls come from different parts of the country and abroad to study and work, but if any untoward incident of sexual assault happens to them, they go back to their hometown and seldom like to return to the city where they were traumatised. Everybody knows the tactics of some lawyers who can twist truth for money and can buy frequent adjournments from courts. Judiciary is always running short of adequate number of judges. It is common practice in courts to schedule a hearing after 3-4 months. How can we expect from a young victim to leave all other preoccupations, skip study and examinations, to appear in the uncertain, inconclusive and apparently endless hearings in the court of lawIJ Justice delayed is justice denied, we all know, and yet we are doing nothing to rid the system of this malady. We are saddled with a judicial structure that is a colonial legacy and highly unfriendly in nature, and which seems to be more preoccupied with preventing people from getting justice than dispensing justice.
Onus on police
One of the tragic revelations the rapist cabbie made was his character certificate from the Delhi Police. However, Yadavs’ claim and proof were summarily dismissed by the Commissioner of Police as “a forged paper”. However, the common man knows how police officials conveniently deny charges, twist facts and absolve themselves of all wrongdoings. Anyone who has ever been to a police station to lodge a complaint or to get any kind of certificate will know the fact. For incidents like mobile theft, burglary, etc, the station officer generally refuses to file an FIR. In most cases they merely put a seal on one’s applications/complaints and give a running signature, which is never legible. The purpose of giving such illegible running signature is that they can later be disowned by the authorities, if need be. This is a ridiculously painful state of affairs, and in most of the government offices one can find deliberate running signatures of the officers for the purpose to deny it in later eventualities.
Criminals are thus, taking advantages of the flaws in Indian police and judiciary systems. Because these were made by our colonial exploiters not with the intention of serving the people but as an instrument of coercion, Indian people find these two systems to be humiliating, tedious, time consuming and expensive, and ultimately, out of a commoner’s reach. Criminals take the advantage of the sad statistical fact that rarely one out of twenty people lodge a complaint with the police and only one out of a hundred pursues the case even after registering a case. Further, we need to understand the fact that getting away with petty crimes boost the morale of a potential criminal who later can get involved in serious crimes of much bigger scales.
A jarring transport
Unfortunately these incidents of rape are occurring on the roads of a metropolitan city. The occurrence of these incidents exposes the flaws of the transport system of Delhi. One doesn’t need to go very far to see the corruption of the police department related to public transport. For bribes, cops are always willing to break the law and allow illegal activities. In fact, they derive a steady income from such illegal transport activities. In one of the photos taken by us (shown here), a Delhi Police bus is being driven on the wrong side of the carriageway. Hundreds of Gramin Sewa tempos violate rules every day. Gramin Sewa generally carries double the number of passengers allowed. This is happening right under the nose of the Delhi Police as the business goes on symbiotically.
It is an open secret that the police and private operators have a tacit understanding under which police allow operators to violate a number of norms, including route violation, passenger strength, etc, and in return these private operators pay Delhi Police a fixed amount. Consequently, mushrooming illegal travel agencies and cab operators do not care about rules and regulations as long as they pay directly to the local police. This is not just limited to the city of Delhi but is standard practice in most parts of our country. These corrupt cops give a share of their booty to their seniors who in turn give it to higher authorities. In fact, postings at different part of the city are earmarked with some expected incomes from corruptions in that area. And the police officers are expected to pay a cut to their higher authorities for such lucrative postings.
What can be done
We need judicial reforms, and we need legal reforms as well. The need of the hour is to put a system in the place so that each incident of sexual assault is registered. Victims will be able to register every case of molestation and rape if and only they are protected and rehabilitated. However, a rape victim is always at the receiving end. She not only suffers from the trauma of the criminal act; her actual suffering starts when she files a complaint to get justice, as she incurs huge social and economic losses. Here we may note that sometimes false rape cases are lodged, but they are relatively rare, and easy to detect.
Rehabilitation of rape victims should be subject to the condition that they will turn up in the courts to help getting perpetrators punished. This is necessary as not only the victim requires financial help but their rehabilitation in government jobs may be very helpful to overcome some levels of social stigma. Financial pool can be made by the government by attaching some percentage of the property of the accused to rehabilitate the victim. Repeated incidents of rape prove that the accused are not being punished, while lack of punishment due to unreported crimes boosts the courage of the sexual predators. We should understand the fact that many of the rapists are serial offenders. They were able to repeat the crime as nobody ever reported the case due to the attitude of the police and due to the vagaries of a lengthy, expensive and harassing judiciary system. Every unreported incident of rape gives birth to the possibility of multiple other rape cases. So it is necessary to bring the very first offence of rape to book.
Unfortunately, our current justice system for a rape victim is limited to the maximum punishment to the offender. In such situation a woman is always a loser even if she gets the perpetrator punished. If rape incidents are not just law & order issue, but also a social, economical and psychological problem, then let the society bear the burden of rehabilitation of rape victims. We can have a compulsory provision of getting government jobs for the rape victims within, say, two months of the incident. This may be psychologically helpful to overcome from the trauma of incident.There could be another lesson for the Indian bureaucracy which issues the certificates and washes off the hand when any such incident occurs by saying that the certificate/testimonial was forged. Why should not the police issue certificates on email by listing the information of the person who is certifiedIJ
Finally, we all know that the onus is on the judiciary: they alone can deliver a speedy justice to rape victims, provided our legal system and penal codes are suitably reformed, provided our laws become transparent and pro-people. Then the judiciary must deliver result in time, and not doing so should attract some kind of fine. Even the police officers responsible for the laxity in such cases should be fined. The other reform could be in the form of minimising the role of lawyers in all rape cases. A female judge can directly hear a case on the basis of the evidence and proofs collected, with minimal interventions from lawyers seeking adjournments or bent on endless cross-examinations. This will not only reduce the harassment to the victim, and reduce her economic burden, but it will expedite justice, and not for the victim alone. When justice is meted out to a perpetrator of rape, the society breathes a sigh of relief.
(Anish Gupta and Tamal Das Gupta teach Economics and English respectively at University of Delhi)