Tag: victim

-report by Zainab Khan

A bench of Bombay High court consisting of Justice A.S.Gadkari reduces the sentence of a rapist in a criminal appeal in the case of Vitthal Rajendra Jogade vs The State Of Maharashtra.

FACTS

In this case, the appellant was convicted u/s 376(2)(I) of IPC and sec 4 and 10 of POCSO Act 2012 for raping a minor girl of 11 years old. On 22nd April 2014 appellant went to the victim’s house for repairing her Cable T.V. When nobody was in the house appellant raped the girl by inserting his fingers into her vagina. On her shouting and sweating, he ran
away from the house. An FIR was lodged on the same day in Akkalkot North Police Station by the victim’s family. Further, a charge sheet was filed for the offense alleged against the appellant before Special Court. After trial and examining all witnesses, the learned Special Judge, Solapur sentenced him to rigorous imprisonment of 10 yrs and a fine of Rs. 15000 u/s 376(2)(i) of IPC and sec 4 &10 of POCSO ACT.

APPELLANT ‘S CONTENTION

Learned Adv. Shraddha D.Sawant appeared for the appellant side. She contended that the allegation put on the appellant was false. There was a land dispute between the appellant’s father and his uncle. Since the appellant’s uncle and victim’s father were close friends and therefore the allegations have been put on him. The counsel pleaded for his
innocence.

RESPONDENT CONTENTION

Learned Adv. S.S.Kaushik was appointed to represent the respondent. The witnesses were examined by the Trial Court which included the mother of the victim and her mother’s friend. Her mother’s friend had called the victim’s mother to accompany her to an agricultural field and it was after she insisted that the mother left the accused alone with the victim. The victim had also called her cousin after the incident around 2-2:30 p.m. and he had arrived, therefore he was also examined. The doctor who had conducted the medical examination was also examined and deposed that the victim had a history of sexual assault around 2 p.m. on 22nd April 2014.

JUDGEMENT

After cross-examining all the witnesses and medical reports, the charges over the appellant prove to be true. The court upheld the decision of the Special Judge, Solapur but reduces the sentence from 10 yrs to 8 yrs. The court observed-

“It is the settled position of law that, the absence of any injuries on the person of the prosecutrix who was the helpless victim of rape might not by itself discredit the statement of the prosecutrix and in such a situation the non-production of a medical report would not be of much consequence if the other evidence was believable. That, corroboration is not the sine qua non for a conviction in a rape case. That, the evidence of prosecutrix stands at higher pedestal than injured witness and needs no corroboration.”

The court relied on the judgment of Adu Ram Vs. Mukna & Ors. Reported in (2005) 10 SCC 597, which discusses the proportion between crime and punishment. The conviction of the appellant was upheld, however, the sentence for rigorous imprisonment was reduced to 8 years.

Victimology is the study of the investigation of the exploitation and connection of casualty and wrongdoer and the cooperation among the casualty and the law enforcement framework. Wrongdoing is a result of society and social circumstances. Nobody is conceived as a criminal. “Each holy person has a past and each delinquent has a future,” goes a famous saying. Hindu Jurisprudence thinks about compensation and contemplation for criminals to have both ‘prayaschita’ and transformation.1 Each individual including criminals has a divine flash and what is expected on our part is to ignite and revive it to empower the general public to recover and, recover him and to re-establish and restore him in the public eye as a helpful, also useful individual. The motivation behind discipline in criminal cases is both reformatory and reformative. The reason is that the individual seen as at fault for committing an offense is made to understand his shortcoming and is stopped from rehashing such acts in the future. The reformative angle is intended to empower the individual worried to yield and atone for his activity and make himself OK to the general public as a valuable social being. From a restricted perspective, victimology is an observational, genuine investigation of survivors of wrongdoing and as such is firmly connected with criminal science and hence perhaps viewed as a piece of the overall issue of crime. In a more extensive sense, victimology is the whole assortment of information with regard to casualties, exploitation, and the endeavors of society to unreasonable the privileges of the person in question. Consequently, it is formed of information drawn from such fields as criminal science, regulation, medication, brain research, social work, legislative issues, training, and policy management.²

VICTIMOLOGY IN INDIA

In Rattan Singh v. Province of Punjab³, Krishna Iyer, J. held that ―it is a shortcoming of our statute that the survivors of the wrongdoing don’t draw in the consideration of regulation. Without a doubt, casualty restitution is as yet the evaporating point of our criminal regulation. This is a lack in the framework which should be rectified by the council. More consideration ought to be attracted to this matter.

In Maru Ram v. Association of India⁴, Krishna Iyer, J. held that while the social obligation of the criminal to re-establish the misfortune or mend the injury is a piece of the correctional activity, the length of the jail term is no restitution to the injured or dispossessed yet is vanity compounder with savagery. Victimology should track down satisfaction not through barbarity but rather by mandatory recoupment by the miscreant of the harm incurred not by giving more agony to the wrongdoer but rather by reducing the loss of the pitiful.

In Dayal Singh v State of Uttaranchal⁵, the Supreme Court held that the criminal preliminary is implied for doing equity to all-the charged, the general public, and the person in question. The courts not only realize the capability to guarantee that no blameless man is rebuffed, yet additionally that the liable man doesn’t get away.

CHILD AS A VICTIM OF CRIME

India records 19% of the world’s youngsters and 1/3rd of the country’s populace, for example, 440 million youngsters are under 18 years and almost 40% of the kids are needing care furthermore, security. On the off chance that the youngsters are not as expected prepped by shielding them from any sort of misuse, attack, and so on the destiny of our future society will be a question mark. Kids’ government assistance and security are fundamental for the brilliant eventual fate of India. Child misuse is a complicated issue and an extraordinary danger that involves serious concern. In the greater part of youngster misuse cases, ―the abuser is either connected with, a known individual or more unusual etc. It is extremely challenging to distinguish whether offender is an abuser because of reasons most popular either to the casualty youngster or to their folks.

A genuinely mishandled child implies a kid under 18 years old, whose guardians or others are concerned, causes upon the youngster an actual injury or real mischief, which incorporates beating, hitting, kicking, consuming, or in any case hurting a kid truly. The UNICEF, Save the kids, and Legislature of India together directed an overview in 2007 and viewed that as 65% of younger students in India are exposed to beating basically the school’s educators actually proceed to follow the well-known adage, spare the bar and ruin the child which was a conventional shrewdness.

PSYCHOLOGICAL MISTREATMENT AND CHILD NEGLECT

It is basically an embarrassment for youngsters. It is otherwise called obnoxious attack, mental maltreatment, and mental abuse. It incorporates acts or inability to act by guardians, overseers, peers, companions, family members, and others that have caused or could cause serious conduct, mental, close to home, or mental trouble/injury. Psychological mistreatment can have all the more dependable negative mental impacts than some other types of misuse.⁶

In Smriti Madan Kansagra v. Perry Kansagra⁷, it was held that guiltless youngsters are utilized as the apparatuses of retaliation by malicious prosecutors who cause extreme mental maltreatment for the kid, in this way truly influencing the kid in his/her later piece of life.

“Disregard” has not to be understood from a restricted perspective of refusal to give food and dress, yet from a more extensive perspective in the setting of the current day social yearnings and necessities of kids which incorporate, love, due care and concern, training and so on. At the point when a youngster endures disregard in the setting of this large number of fundamental necessities, he makes certain to be genuinely hit, reflecting unfavorably upon her intellectual capacity and that is mental injury.⁸

Child sexual maltreatment, as per P.D. Mathew, incorporates utilizing, utilizing, actuating, or forcing, any kid to take part in illegal and reach, it additionally incorporates the utilization of youngsters helping other people to take part in express sex.

The term ‘missing youngsters’ incorporates runaway children, kids who are kidnapped, and those who get lost or isolated from their families. Be that as it may, the single biggest part adding to these enormous numbers is runaway kids between the ages gathering of 10 and 18. While some leave home for paltry reasons like not having any desire to study, others are compelled to escape from what they say is a hopeless existence. Many pass on their homes to get by or to get away from misuse, while a huge number succumb to trafficking.⁹

VICTIMIZATION AGAINST WOMEN

Orientation-based savagery targets influence ladies and young ladies lopsidedly. Around 1 of every 3 ladies overall have encountered sexual and different types of savagery. Ladies are likewise considerably more reasonable than men to be killed by their close accomplices or relatives. Violations including brutality against ladies are among the most under-announced and to the least extent liable to end in conviction. Survivors frequently face critical hindrances because of holes in criminal regulation and system, orientation generalizations, casualty accusing, and deficient actions of law enforcement establishments and experts, prompting optional exploitation.

Viciousness against ladies and young ladies is one of the world’s most pervasive common freedoms infringement, occurring consistently, many times over, across the globe. It has serious short-and long haul physical, monetary, and mental results on ladies especially young, forestalling their full and equivalent support in the public arena. The greatness of its effect, both in the existence of people, families, and society, all in all, is unfathomable.¹⁰ Conditions made by the pandemic – including lockdowns, diminished versatility, elevated confinement, stress and monetary vulnerability – have prompted a disturbing spike in aggressive behavior at home and have additionally uncovered ladies and young ladies to different types of viciousness, from kid union with lewd behavior on the web.

CONCLUSION

The effect of wrongdoing on the people in question and the families can range from serious physical and mental wounds to gentle disturbances. A survey¹¹ of the lawful structure according to freedoms of survivors of wrongdoing uncovers that aside from giving pay, very little has been done either legally or through plans to address the whole scope of issues looked at by casualties of wrongdoing. Because of the shortfall of any regulation on this angle the victim of wrongdoing for example the casualty is appeared to be overlooked. Notwithstanding, it is expressed that in India the casualties don’t have legitimate freedoms and security, they have the right to assume their part in criminal procedures which will quite often bring about disinterestedness in the procedures and subsequent twists in law enforcement organizations. Numerous casualties don’t go to the police out of dread of unfriendly exposure and pointless provocation. Be that as it may, in the event of youngsters, he is obscure to the equity arrangement of the country which results in the expansion in the unregistered cases which prompts the disappointment of rebuilding of the youngster into the general public. Aside from the deferral or even shortfall of equity, the casualties face comparable rates sometimes and they track down a protected spot in the public eye and see no future possibilities for carrying on with their existence with poise. In respect of this, the courts need to show the incredible feeling of obligation and to be more delicate while managing issues where a youngster is a person in question.

CITATIONS

¹ Karamjit Singh v. State AIR 2000 SC 3457.

² Randhawa, Gurpreet Singh, Victimology and Compensatory Jurisprudence, 1st Ed., Central Law Publications,

Allahabad, 2011, p. 42.

³ Rattan Singh v. Province of Punjab, 1979 (4) SCC 719.

⁴ Maru Ram v. Association of India, Krishna Iyer, 1981 (1) SCC 107.

⁵ Dayal Singh v State of Uttaranchal, 2012 (8) SCC 263.

⁶ Deccan Herald dt. 14th August 2009.

⁷ Smriti Madan Kansagra v. Perry Kansagra, MANU/DE/0386/2017.

⁸ Lubna Mehraj and Ors. v. Mehraj-ud-Din Kanth, MANU/JK/0252/2003.

⁹ Humaira Ansari &Surekha S. “Missing‖ DNA, Mumbai, 19 July 2008.

¹⁰ Ending violence against women, https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/faqs/types-of-violence ( available at 2 July,2022).

¹¹ Kumaravelu Chockalingam, ― Measures for Crime Victims in the Indian Criminal Justice System.

This article is written by Arpita Kaushal, a student of UILS, PUSSGRC, HOSHIARPUR.