تجاوز، بازداشت و توانبخشی Rape, deterrence and rehabilitation: a need to relook the policy discourse

Woes of rape: impact on women’s health Rape is one of the most prominent crimes against women in India. The reported rape cases in India have doubled between 1990 and 2008, yet there is an abysmally low rate of conviction for the rape cases in the country reported by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB 2011). In 2011, out of the total number of cases that went to court, the overall rate of convictions was 26.4 per cent, as 4072 convictions were upheld, while 11,351 of the accused were acquitted. These also included pending cases from previous years. Of late, although the law against rape has become more stringent in view of the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee report, the incidence of rapes and violence against women have not reduced.1 There also remained a high possibility that due to social, economic, political and legal constraints, many cases went unnoticed and were often unregistered. This is primarily due to the fear of stigma, police and judicial harassment, lack of financial support and lack of information regarding relief, as a result, victimised people2 are restrained from lodging a First Information Report (FIR) in police stations. Furthermore, the data on rape are the ones which are reported, and most importantly, which do not include marital rape. According to a 1996 survey, which covered 6902 men in the state of Uttar Pradesh, around 45% of men acknowledged that they were physically and sexually abusing their wives (UNICEF 2000). The issue of marital rape, however, has not found much place in the public discourse. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2012 did not include marital rape, and when the bill became a law with an amendment, marital rape was still not considered as rape. The Indian Penal Code (IPC),3 that got amended in 2013, has used the issue of marital rape under its exceptional clause, and states that sexual intercourse of a man with his own wife, when the wife is not under 15 years of age, is not rape. The law remains gender biased, opening up avenues to further humiliation and trauma for the already marginalised section in society.