1.5 lakh child rape cases await justice

In April 2017, a seven-year-old was brutally raped and thrashed, before being thrown into a pit to die by one of her relatives in Ghaziabad. The police later tracked the 26-year-old culprit and booked him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, which promises speedy resolution of cases – within a year. But the child's family is still awating justice.

The case happens to be among 1.5 lakh cases of child rape victims whose families are awaiting justice since 2012 from special courts constituted under the POCSO Act, 2012.

The statistics were shared with the Supreme Court on Thursday as part of a report prepared by the Supreme Court Registry and amicus curiae senior advocate V Giri after a bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi took suo moto cognisance of rising number of child rape cases in the country.

To tide over this shocking state of affairs, the bench of the CJI, Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose gave a two-month deadline on Thursday to the central government to set up one POCSO court in each district where over 100 cases were pending.

It will be a centrally funded scheme and needs to incorporate the cost of appointing judicial officers, court staff, support persons to counsel the child victims, and special public prosecutors sensitized to handle child victims. The court will monitor implementation of its directions on September 26.

The report said about 670 courts across the country deal with 1.5 lakh POCSO offences, making it an average of 224 cases that a single judge has to decide daily.

At this rate, it will take six more years to dispose the present backlog, notwithstanding fresh cases getting added. "These are the real issues that concern judiciary and not the Collegium," the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta representing Centre.

Prepared by the amicus curiae and SC Registrar Surinder Singh Rathi, the report gave interesting insights into the causes that delay trial and investigation under POCSO. 

It stated that the highest pendency under POCSO was recorded in Uttar Pradesh (44,376 cases) followed by Maharashtra (19,968) and Madhya Pradesh (9878) with there being a steady flow of 33,000 fresh cases getting registered across the country each year.

The average annual disposal rate of cases under POCSO was 24 per cent. The remaining 76 per cent undisposed cases caused a pile-up over the last five years by almost 15 times. Some states had a better disposal rate, such as Mizoram (52%), Madhya Pradesh (36%), Sikkim (39%)and Assam (30%) while some performed worst: Odisha (12%), Maharashtra (14%) and Delhi (15%) in last five years.

Another chink spotted causing delays in deciding POCSO cases was poor judge-case ratio. Kerala with 14 districts had only three POCSO courts as a result of which a single judge has to handle 2211 cases. This is the worst case scenario followed by UP (1:592), Maharashtra (1:555), Telangana (1:492) and Delhi (1:383). The ideal ratio as per the report was 1:60, which is being achieved currently by Chandigarh, Punjab and to some extent Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.

Giri attributed the delay in trial to lack of forensic labs as on an average, samples take six to nine months to get examined. He emphasised the need to have child-friendly courtrooms. The bench directed the Centre to ensure POCSO courtrooms are designed in a manner that the victim gets a support person in a room separate from the courtroom from where only the support person gets to interact with the prosecution and judge.

As part of Giri's suggestion to improve awareness on the subject, the court directed the Centre to ensure that a short clip sensitising people on child abuse with helpline numbers is screened in movie halls and shown in television channels, besides at schools and public places.

OPINION

I thank the Supreme Court for pointing out the lacunae when it comes to justice for sexually abused children. Just a fortnight back, CJI Gogoi stated how disturbed he was about the trying of cases. It took 12 years for the POCSO Act to be formulated. So far all states have made a watertight law. You get cases in Mumbai where sometimes police extend themselves, and with one or two POCSO courts, the judges also extend themselves to do whatever they can for these abused children. Let everyone look at the statistics. For every culprit put behind bars there are several others who go scot-free, laughing at the system. It is an emergency and emergency measures are required. CMs of every state should step up to improve POCSO courts. —Pinki Virani, author of ‘Bitter Chocolate’, a book on child sex abuse; member of panel that helped formulate POCSO Act