As an eight-month-old rape survivor from Delhi battles for her life at the AIIMS, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered a nationwide inquiry into how many child sex abusers had actually been punished for the years.
A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, ordered data from the High Courts on the number of pending cases of child abuse booked under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
Public interest litigation petitioner and advocate Alok Alakh Shrivastava said there was a 95% pendency rate, as per the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau. Chief Justice Misra said the court wanted fresh and independent data collected by a team constituted under the supervision of the Chief Justices of the High Courts.
The Bench said it wanted to know the status so as to set a deadline for the completion of trials in special courts designated under the Act.
The court gave the High Courts four weeks to submit the data to the Supreme Court Registry.
Though Mr. Srivastava urged the court to prescribe the noose for child abusers, rapists and paedophiles, the Centre in February said: “The death penalty is not the answer for everything.”
The case concerns the “brutal” sexual assault of an eight-month-old child in the national capital. The child was shifted to the AIIMS for intensive care under the court’s January 31 order.
