Let the children cry: States have fallen woefully behind in setting up POCSO courts. Who cares?
The government has done its bit by passing the law. Expecting implementation too is too much.
A lot happened in the past 10 days — a horrific tale of sexual abuse from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur came to light, where the victims were as young as seven years old. The Lok Sabha passed a Bill approving death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. And, on August 6, a horror story similar to Muzaffarpur emerged from Uttar Pradesh’s Deoria.
India already has a comprehensive law to deal with cases of sexual abuse against children. To add to it, the government has approved the death sentence for those raping little girls.
Clearly, the administration has done its part. We can reasonably expect authorities to do no more.
Which is why, the news that many states are yet to set up adequate number of special courts to try cases of child sex abuse — as they are supposed to under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 — should cause no shock or outrage.
The proof of the pudding might be in the eating, but who says the efficacy of the law is in its implementation? As long as the government is promptly passing stringent laws, our children are safe — if not in spirit, most definitely in letter.
A key feature of the POCSO Act was the provision for time-bound trials — the evidence of the child was to be recorded within 30 days, and the trial to be completed in one year. For this, special courts were to be set up in every district of every state (except Jammu and Kashmir, where POCSO is not applicable) that would only hear POCSO cases, and special public prosecutors appointed to see the trial to their logical conclusion.
India has roughly 640 districts. Now, the government has told the Lok Sabha, in context of the Muzaffarpur case, that in six years, a grand total of 620 special courts were set up across the country (the detailed breakup provided added up to 681 courts, according to The Indian Express).
In either case, it comes down to roughly one special court in every district to hear POCSO cases.
Well, why should these states hurry? What, after all, is the urgency to make sure that cases of sexual assault on children — one of the worst kinds of abuse on a very vulnerable population — are tried fast, and the guilty brought to book?
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), rapes of children saw an 82 per cent jump from 2015 to 2016 — as many as 19,765 children were raped in 2016, the last year for which NCRB data is available.
Here’s another set of figures: in 2016, of the number of POCSO cases heard by overburdened courts, only 3 per cent resulted in conviction.
But to link this to the failure of states in setting up special courts is a tad unfair, surely?
It is not like we live in a country where many of the raped children are from the weaker sections of the society and as the trial drags on — often against economically and socially more privileged accused — the victim’s family runs out of resources, or the will, to fight.
The NCRB data also tells us that in 94 per cent of the cases, the offender is known to the victim. But that doesn’t mean we can conclude that the longer a trial lasts, the more the opportunity for the accused to manipulate, threaten or coerce the victims to dilute their statement, or otherwise derail the trial.
The lack of urgency to set up these courts is shared by governments across the country, across political parties.
Telangana has 10 special courts for its 31 districts, Uttar Pradesh 56 for 75, Gujarat 21 for 33. Meanwhile, there are more than 90,205 cases pending trial in India’s 29 states and Union territories.
None of this is a secret — all the data is available in the public domain, collected by government agencies. Yet, when pushed to a back-foot over the Kathua and Unnao rape cases, the Centre chose to respond with introducing a new provision — that of the death penalty. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2018, also talks of speedy probes, and stipulates that a trial should be completed in two months.
So far, too good.
The government has passed another law.
Demanding implementation, too, is just too much.