Despite special courts, cases involving city kids pile up

Five years after a boy was allegedly sodomised by a police constable in east Delhi, the trial in the case is yet to start. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 27, 2012, 01:51:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Five years after a boy was allegedly sodomised by a police constable in east Delhi, the trial in the case is yet to start.

This and many other instances point to an increasing pendency in cases related to children despite setting up of special courts for them.

Delhi had become the first city in India to set up special courts for children in 2010 on the Delhi High Court's directions. All cases related to children were to be transferred to these courts.

But, Mahesh (name changed), the sodomy victim, is bearing the brunt of high pendency of cases related to children in regular courts.

His case has not been transferred to a children's court. As a result, even the trial is yet to begin.

"The boy from a poor family in Bihar had come to Delhi for five times in the past one year but nothing has moved," said Raj Mangal Prasad of NGO Pratidhi, who has through several RTI applications tried to highlight the suffering of children in conflict with law because of slow justice.

Of the total 526 cases received by the 11 children courts across Delhi, only 181 cases have been disposed of - a disposal rate of just 34.4 %. Cases as old as eight years are still pending in the courts, one of the RTI reply shows.

Seema (name changed), a victim of gang rape at the age of 12, is another victim of this protracted legal process. Her case is pending for almost four years now. The police had recovered her in a traumatic state.

She was kidnapped from a market in east Delhi's Preet Vihar area and then sexually assaulted.

She could be able to return to a normal life only after intense and prolonged counselling. But she is yet to get justice as the trial against those who assaulted her has been progressing at a snail's pace at the Karkadooma Courts.

The RTI reply shows that maximum cases were received by the south east district court followed by the north east court, a reason for high pendency of such cases in these courts.

The data showed most of the victims were assaulted both physically and sexually.

"The delay in justice to children increases their trauma, which, on many occasions, can have a lifelong impact. The judiciary should take steps to ensure that children get justice at a faster rate," Prasad said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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