Times of India: Chandigarh:
Tuesday, May 22, 2018.
When the Varnika Kundu stalking case had become a talking point in the country
last year, there was no clarity on the actual number of cases related to sexual
harassment in Chandigarh. The department of laws, Panjab University (PU), has
now managed to collect data to show that 574 cases were registered under
Section 354 (outraging modesty of a woman) of the IPC from 2006 to 2016 in
Chandigarh and that around half of such cases ended in acquittals.
As high as
49% cases resulted in acquittal of the accused and only in 15% of cases the
accused were convicted, the study found. Babita Devi, a faculty member of the
department of laws, along with her research staff, including Deepak Thakur,
conducted the study on sexual harassment and covered eight educational
institutions of Chandigarh.
The data
collected during the study mentions that under Section 509 (insulting woman’s
modesty through word or gesture) of the IPC, 120 cases were registered from
2006 to 2016 in Chandigarh, out of which 46% of cases resulted in acquittal and
only in 18% of cases the accused were convicted.
“This data
shows that in the cases involving sexual harassment of women, the rate of
acquittal is very high and that of conviction less. There might be procedural
lacuna in the system or it also raises questions on the complaints of sexual
harassment made in the first place,” said Babita Devi.
Elaborating
on the probable reasons behind the high acquittal rate, Rita Kohli, additional
advocate general, Punjab, said, “It is the delayed process. People do initially
file complaints, but there comes a phase when the complainant feels that she is
being victimized. A number of times near and dear ones of the complaints would
say it was a small thing, move on now that this has happened. So, sustaining
that pressure for girls individually and independently and all by themselves is
another big factor. With quick delivery of justice, people would be able to
withstand all kinds of external pressure. The delay would make it individually
difficult to fight it out.”
However,
Manjeet Kaur, advocate, district court, Chandigarh, said the Criminal Law (Amendment)
Act, 2013, has strengthened the Section 354 of the IPC by bifurcating it and
specifying the offences like stalking and voyeurism. “The law before 2013
directed either two year of imprisonment “or” fine. So, the fine in many cases
would be considered acquittal. This could be one of the reasons of the high
rate of acquittal. The victim blaming and wisdom shaming is another unfortunate
aspect, which discourages complainants.”
Info sought
under RTI
The data on
the acquittal and conviction rate was sought under RTI by the faculty member
who conducted the study. However, other data was collected with the help of
three sets of questionnaires, including one each for females and males and one
set common for females and males. These questionnaires were distributed among
men and women of different age groups at eight different educational
institutions in Chandigarh. The total data of the research was collected from
325 respondents out of 480.
More
findings
Information
from educational institutions on the number of sexual harassment cases from
2014 to 2017 was sought under the RTI Act during the study. Panjab University
and PGI had the highest number of sexual harassment complaints among other
institutions in Chandigarh.
.JPG)
.JPG)
