Police Refuses Filing Assault Cases, Ask for Settlement, say Activists

Despite the social and legal overhaul seen after the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, there continues to be a lag in how the police treats rape, molestation, sexual assault etc. cases and its survivors.

Human rights groups are of the view that while the law enforcing agencies should have strengthened its approach towards such cases, much of it still remains the same. Victim shaming and refusal to file FIR continue to take place rampantly. Activists say that police denies filing cases against suspected rapists and particularly favour settlement between the survivor and the predator.

In one of the cases, a woman from rural Rajasthan said, “Police came to our house and threatened us, saying 'sign a settlement or we will beat you up'.” Her assaulter was none other than her own brother-in-law who bound and assaulted her last year.

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"They also asked for a bribe, intimidated us. Whenever I would go to the police station, they would try to shoo me away, saying things like 'you're just pretending, you're lying, nothing has happened'," said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, reported Channel News Asia.

In a November 2017 report, Human Rights Watch identified that the promises that Police had made to improve the handling of such cases have gone unfulfilled. It still ends up directing victims to local hospitals for degrading virginity tests, says Jan Sahas, a charity assisting women with legal services.

“Police came to our house and threatened us, saying 'sign a settlement or we will beat you up'.”

"They often treat victims like animals," said the charity's Harish Chandra Dipankar.

However, Delhi Commission for Women Chief Swati Malliwal has a slightly positive comment to make which is that the amendments and reforms have made reporting a rape easier after the protest and outrage against 2012 gangrape. However, she says that there is nothing more that has happened.

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"It is sad that even an eight-month-old baby's rape doesn't shake up the system," Maliwal said of the rape of an infant by his own cousin while her parents were off to work on a Sunday at the beginning of this year.

But all these observations do not deter Delhi police's spokesman Madhur Verma to comment that women "feel safer than they used to feel five years ago".

Picture credit- BBC

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