The impact of medico-legal judgments on court trials in sexual violence

The health sector plays a crucial role and is often the first point of contact for survivors of sexual violence. Situational analysis of practices of health professionals in a public hospital in India^[1] clearly brought out the gaps in the therapeutic as well as medico-legal response of the hospital to sexual violence survivors, highlighting the need to develop a model health sector response to sexual violence. CEHAT has been instrumental in removing forensic biases from the rape examination chapter of most popular textbook called Modi’s textbook of forensic science and toxicology and will be working towards establishing a framework informed by the medico legal role of health providers as enlisted in the laws governing sexual violence.

In order to gauge the role of medical evidence in actual court judgements it is important to carry out a content analysis on age, nature of sexual violence, the duration of the case from the time of filing the complaint till the time of judgement, nature of questions asked to the survivors, nature of questions asked to the doctors, role of medical evidence in the judgment, preparedness of prosecution, corroboration of evidence, forms of punishment and the like. Such an analysis will elicit factors leading to acquittal and conviction. Another objective which partakes is the tracking and interviewing doctors, working with the medico legal records department of all the three hospitals and procuring the FSL reports and analysing medico-legal documentation pertaining to women and girls trafficked into prostitution. Working with the organisations involved in working with trafficked women/ girls are commonly referred to as ‘rescue institutions’ as they work at pulling out girls who have been forced into prostitution.

 

CEHAT Team:

Sangeeta Rege

Sanjida Arora

Anupriya Singh

Anjali Kadam

Supported by:

Azim Premji University.