The series of incidents of sexual assault of minor girls, from Kathua to Tappal has cast a doubt on the safety of the children. A look at the National Crime Record Bureau data is revealing. Within five years, the incidents of rapes of minor girl children have increased enormously. In 2012, the number of cases of molestations and rapes of the girls of 17 years and below was 8,541. This number increased to 19765 in 2016. In 2018, an ordinance was passed for providing death penalty for rape of children below 12 years, however this has not deterred the criminals nor reduced the incidents.

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Reasons for rise in the rape cases:

• A rise in reporting due to lowering of the stigma attached.
• Rise of awareness mainly due to social media
• Celebrities opening up about being abused in their childhood also motivated parents to report
• POCSO in 2012 & Criminal Law (Amendment) Act in 2013 led to higher reporting of rape against children
• Definition of rape now includes many more sexual actions than were earlier classified as sexual assault
• Age of consent for girls has been raised from 16 to 18 years. This means boys who have consensual sex can be charged with rape.
• Low conviction rate: it is only about 3 per cent of the total cases brought before courts as per the NCRB Report 2016. One of the main causes for the low rate of conviction under the Act is a lack of infrastructure and manpower in the criminal justice system.
• Failure of previous acts: Despite the enactment of the POCSO Act in 2012, there has been no decline in the number of crimes against children. Inference – The new law was no deterrent.
• Delay in justice: It is common for court cases to last years or even decades- one of the reasons is the serious shortage of judges. More than 6 million criminal cases that have been pending for more than 10 years. Timelines for completion of the investigation, for recording of evidence, and for completion of trial are almost never adhered to due to pendency of cases and the lack of facilities
• Politicians’ attitude: Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav went on record in 2014 to say that crimes like rapes shouldn’t lead to death sentence because “boys are boys and they make mistakes”.
• In a 2017 report, “Everyone Blames Me,” Human Rights Watch found that survivors (of the crime), particularly among marginalized communities, still find it difficult to register police complaints.
• They often suffer humiliation at police stations and hospitals, are still subjected to degrading tests by medical professionals, and feel intimidated and scared when the case reaches the courts. They face significant barriers when trying to obtain critical support services such as health care, counselling, and legal aid.

Measures needed:

• The Indian government has, in recent years, adopted significant legal reforms for sexual violence cases but major gaps remain in their implementation.
• It is the certainty and uniformity of the punishment, rather than the nature of it, which actually deters an offender from committing a crime.
• Deterrence of the crime and the victim’s access to justice require both better implementation of existing laws and systemic changes.
• Many Indians – men and women – refuse to believe that sexual violence is a serious problem eating away at India’s vitals. It is essential to recognise that the crisis lies in the precise manner in which the existing criminal justice system unfolds.
• India’s growing rape culture can be best reversed by enhancing conviction rates through reforms in the police and judicial systems, and by augmenting measures to rehabilitate and empower rape survivors.
• Criminal justice system remains vulnerable to political pressures and allows many of the accused to go scot-free.
• The re-training of police officers dealing with various aspects of sexual crimes.
• Strict action must be taken against the police officer found guilty of obstructing the probe or colluding with perpetrators of such cases.

Conclusion:

Society itself will have to take the responsibility of giving it the right direction. Without this, we cannot achieve all the promise that we had as a nation at the time of Independence. We must collectively rise to the occasion and create a safe India for our children.