Monetary aid for rape victims

A rape victim will be entitled to a compensation of Rs 200,000, provided she testifies in a court of law against the accused.

Updated on: Jan 8, 2010, 01:02:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A rape victim will be entitled to a compensation of Rs 200,000, provided she testifies in a court of law against the accused.

Seventeen years after the Supreme Court directed the government to provide aid to rape victims, the Women and Child Development ministry has finalised a draft scheme under which a victim will get Rs 20,000 within a fortnight of lodging a rape complaint as interim relief. Another Rs 50,000 will be provided for immediate rehabilitation and medical expenses.

The ministry — which will circulate a note for cabinet consideration next week — expects to notify the scheme before March 31, the end of this fiscal.

For interim compensation, registering case will not be mandatory. The National Commission for Women had argued that in some places cases are not registered, if the accused is an influential person.

“Our aim is not to get cases registered but to provide help,” a senior ministry official said, after the scheme was finalised on Wednesday.

“There is no need to specifically ask for a copy of FIR,” said the officer, who refused to be identified as the plan is yet to get the cabinet’s nod.

A Criminal Injuries Relief and Rehabilitation Board with a legal expert and a doctor as members has been proposed in every district. It will provide interim relief based on documents given by the victim, irrespective of the police action on the complaint.

The scheme, however, doesn’t have any provision of recovering compensation, in case the complaint is false, a provision sought by police bodies.

“Our aim is to provide financial succour…,” Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath said. She said there were sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse.

No compensation will be given to a woman who had previously lodged a rape complaint or where the delay in reporting results in the end of evidence.

Around 18,000 rape cases are registered in India every year, says the National Crime Records Bureau. The conviction rate is below 20 per cent, among the lowest in the world.

The scheme, the ministry believes, will narrow the gap, as major part of the compensation, Rs 1.30 lakh, will be paid at the end of trial.

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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