Okay! So it seems that our esteemed (not) Supreme Court has finally come to its senses and spoken some words of wisdom. The head of the Indian judicial system has asked all trial courts, to consider a rape victim’s testimony much higher then a regular witness’s testimony. It’s to be taken as good as the ‘gospel truth’.
As per TOI:
Just her word against the alleged rapist is enough, said a Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia.
Explaining the enormous amount of reliance put on the victim’s statement, Justice Pasayat, writing the judgment for the Bench said in a normal course a victim of sexual assault does not like to disclose such an offence even before her family members much less before the police.
“The Indian woman has tendency to conceal such offence because it involves her prestige as well as prestige of her family. Only in a few cases, the victim girl or the family members have courage to go before the police station and lodge a case,” he said.
On the subject of increase in the number of crime against women, Mr. Pasayat had to say…
“It is an irony that while we are celebrating women’s rights in all spheres, we show little or no concern for her honour.
It is a sad reflection on the attitude of indifference of the society towards the violation of human dignity of the victims of sex crimes”.
The bench further added,
“She (rape victim) deserves to be treated like a person who has been inflicted with deep wounds by the perpetratorâ€.
All of this sounds so damn pleasing to my ears, makes me wanna get up and give the concerned bench a standing ovation….but then seriously thinking over it, I rather see these words in action before I get my hopes up too high. The biggest challange would be to get some sincerity out of the remaining players of the justice system, aka. the Police and the Lawyers.
After all, words are cheap.
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Shashikant
May 20th, 2006 at 6:25 am | #
If Ive understood this correctly, the honourable SC judges feel that not treating the victim’s words as being the ultimate proof is anachronistic. Yet it is important that, one must also guard against shutting out the voice of the alleged oppressor.
Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act is one such act, which has been subjected to constant misuse, to either get even with someone or for pecuniary gain.
Another example of ‘totalitarianism’ are the slew of anti-terrorism acts enacted all over the country. POTA and TADA were more misused than used.
Having said that though, one has to concede that in this case the ‘her-word-is-gospel’ approach may actually work in the favour of the victim moreoften than not.