NEW DELHI: It was an unusual start to a Tuesday morning for 30-odd schoolchildren of Modern School, Barakhamba Road, when they got to interact with judges, doctors and police officers. What made the field visit even more special was their guide — Delhi high court
acting chief justice Gita Mittal, who descended on Lok Nayak Hospital and Barakhamba Road police station with the students in tow.
The tour was the result of the initiative taken by Justice Mittal, as executive chairperson of the Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DLSA), to prepare a module on sexual violence for students aged 14-18 years to enable first-hand knowledge of medico-legal and investigative procedures following sexual offences. Not surprisingly, the acting chief justice had to answer a host of queries on issues related to rape and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. A pertinent question was on whether a death sentence for those raping children below 12 years wouldn’t prove counter-productive in the long run.
The effort was to help the students understand the functioning of police stations, hospitals and courts and, in turn, the entire criminal justice system whenever a sexual crime was committed. The high court registrar general, Dinesh Sharma, elaborated, “Concerned with the increasing cases of sexual violence against children, the acting chief justice and DLSA wanted to make the city’s school students aware of the forms that sexual violence can take and to empower them to take remedial action if any such incident occurred with them or they learnt of such incidents.”
At the Lok Nayak Hospital, the students were offered a peek into how the One Stop Centre (OSC), a dedicated facility for victims of sexual assault, worked. Dr J C Passey, medical director, of Lok Nayak hospital, told TOI, “At OSC, we showed the students clothes that victims change into when what they are wearing are taken away as forensic evidence. We also showed them the multiple envelopes used to collect evidence such as the hair of the assailant. If there is a bruise on the victim’s face, the blood sample is taken, as is the semen sample.”
The hospital director added that the students were intrigued by this exposure to the process and actively participated in the discussions that followed. “They asked questions about where the envelopes went and how the forensic experts ensured that evidence was not tampered with. We tried to answer all queries,” Passey said.
At the Barakhamba Road police station, Justice Mittal and DSLSA members educated the students about the procedures that are adopted to counsel victims of sexual offences to reduce their agony and set the legal process in motion. “The visiting students showed keen interest in learning about police work and were happy to see how the records and case properties are maintained in a police station,” said DCP Madhur Verma. “They were also apprised about our initiatives, including the women’s helpdesk and the public facilitation officer.”
While this pioneering field trip had students from Modern School, the next will involve children from Bal Bharti Air Force School and Mother’s International School, followed by consecutive training programmes in other public and government schools, DLSA said.
Some 30 kids were part of the initiative