Government proposes immediate assistance for POCSO victims

HYDERABAD:  In a bid to do away with all the trouble that victims of POCSO cases undergo until they receive monetary assistance, the Women Development and Child Welfare Department (WDCW) of Telangana has now proposed to release an immediate financial assistance to victims soon after an FIR gets registered. 

At present, after the complaint gets lodged and the FIR registered, a request for financial assistance is sent to the district collector concerned. Once the collector convenes his/her monthly meeting and approves the same, the WDCW department starts the process of releasing the financial assistance.

The assistance, slated to be around `15,000, will be accessible to the child victims the moment the complaint gets registered by local police. It will primarily cover the transport and medical expenses borne by victims and their families.  

This monetary help will be over and above the compensation of `1 lakh offered by the State government to the victims. However, the latter is released only in a phased manner with the first installment coming in after the FIR gets registered, and later after the charge sheet and medical report of the cases come in. According to officials, only about 70-80 cases so far have received a full compensation of `1 lakh, with majority of them pending.

In September 2018, the Supreme Court had even directed that the POCSO victims be paid compensation under the NALSA compensation scheme wherein rape victims can get between Rs 4 and Rs 7 lakh. 
However, this amount can be claimed only after the accused gets convicted. This, in turn, makes monetary assistance a farfetched dream as POCSO cases have dismally low conviction rates.