Acta Universitatis Danubius: Juridica (Nov 2010)
Rape Crime, Law and Victim’s Right an Analysis from Indian Penal System
Abstract
God endowed man and women with same sense of emotion, passion, pain and pleasure, yet both differ from each other. Her gentle tenderness and tolerance make her different from her fellow partner. Indeed women are given place of pride in almost all the religion. Her importance, rights and privileges are recognized by almost all religious scripture. Even then she is subjected to several socialprejudices. Causing carnal catastrophe is one of the most demeaning devices adopted to subjugate women. Today the greater challenging before her is to protect her dignity chastity and virginity.Women are sexually exploited in almost all sphere of life. This crime has neither face of its own nor any territorial boundary but with the fact that women are to greater extent its victim, the degree of thiscrime and the victims’ status aftermath the crime differ. In India the incident of rape seems to be less when compared with the foreign country. Numerically, among all crime rape is relatively in frequentphenomenon (0.3 % of total crime in India) but among the crime against the women the rape constitute the highest percentage. Case study reveals that there has been a strong increase in offenceof rape in past decade. There has been almost 2,487 rape cases reported between 1971 to 1978, which had increased to 4,621 cases in the same year. According to the official statistic produce by theNational Human right commission Delhi in the year 1991, one woman is molested every 26 minute. These are statistic reported cases, which if include unreported cases the matter would have been ofevery second rather than minute. In response to this government of India approached Law commission with a request to suggest substantive and procedural reformation of criminal law. In spite of amendment made to the criminal law in 1983, the legal system could hardy control the crime, perhaps there is a necessity of awaking calls from the victims’ side on one hand and rapid judicialintervention on the other. The question is not whether women have right to bodily integrity as this right is already adumbrated in almost the Articles of Indian Constitution exclusively under Art 21,which guarantees the right to life and liberty to men and women both alike. But whether it is imperative to take a decisive step toward extirpating this evil and make the contemporary and furthersociety a safe place for women. The hypothetical point here is that this crime cannot be prevented only by new enactment or enlarging the law enforcing agencies because several other factors areresponsible for increase in crime, to which legal system has to intervene.
