LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Collective Violence and Criminal Justice System 2018 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: organise the first limb by who the perpetrator is, because that is the variable that determines which law applies, what evidence is available and why cases fail. Violence by an intimate partner, by the wider family, by an acquaintance, by a stranger, by an institution and by the community are six different legal problems, not one. Then take the government measures in order of the year they were made and assess each. Keep case law for testing whether the measure worked.

The violence, by relationship

By the intimate partner. This is the largest category by a wide margin in every survey. The criminal law addresses it through section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which punishes cruelty by a husband or his relative, with cruelty defined by section 86 to include conduct likely to drive the woman to suicide or to cause grave injury, and harassment with a view to coercing an unlawful demand for property.

By an institution. Section 68 punishes sexual intercourse by a public servant, a jail superintendent, or the management or staff of a hospital or remand home with a woman in custody or under charge, and it does not require proof of force, because consent in such a relationship is not meaningful. Section 75 addresses harassment at work, alongside the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.

By the market and by medicine. Trafficking, addressed by the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 and the trafficking provisions of the Sanhita, and sex selection before birth, addressed by the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994.

The government measures, in sequence

1961 and 1986: the first statutes. The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 were declaratory and almost unenforced; the Dowry Act's principal legacy is the definition of dowry that later provisions borrow.

2012 and 2013: the two large reforms. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 created a gender-neutral, age-graded code for child sexual offences. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, enacted on the report of the Committee under Justice J.S. Verma constituted on 23 December 2012 and reporting on 23 January 2013, redefined rape, created discrete offences of acid attack, sexual harassment, disrobing, voyeurism and stalking, and defined consent. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act of the same year gave statutory form to what Vishaka had directed sixteen years earlier.

2018 and after: severity. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018 introduced the death penalty for rape of a girl below twelve and graded minimum sentences. The procedural guarantees now sit in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: recording of information by a woman police officer under the proviso to section 173(1), medical examination under section 184, completion of investigation within two months under section 193(2), a forensic team at the scene of any offence punishable with seven years or more under section 176(3), the bar on arresting a woman after sunset under section 43(5), and victim compensation, treatment of victims and a witness protection scheme under sections 396 to 398.

State of Punjab v. Gurmit Singh, (1996) 2 SCC 384 is the test of whether the trial works. A schoolgirl was abducted and raped, and the trial court acquitted because it disbelieved her, relying on delay in the complaint and on its own expectations of how a victim behaves. Setting the acquittal aside, the Supreme Court held that the evidence of the prosecutrix stands on the same footing as that of an injured witness, that corroboration is not a rule of law, that delay must be understood against social reality, and that such trials should ordinarily be held in camera and, where practicable, before a woman judge. Much of this became statutory only in 2013.

Lalita Kumari v. Government of U.P., (2014) 2 SCC 1 is the test of whether the case is registered at all. A Constitution Bench held that registration of an FIR is mandatory under what was then section 154 of the Code where the information discloses a cognizable offence, that no preliminary enquiry is permissible in such a case, and that action must be taken against officers who fail to register. Non-registration remains the single largest point of loss in this class of case, which is why this decision matters more to outcomes than the definition of any offence.

The assessment

Two criticisms are decisive. The first is the exception Parliament kept. The Verma Committee recommended removing the marital rape exception, removing the sanction requirement for prosecuting armed forces personnel for sexual offences in disturbed areas, and introducing command responsibility; none was accepted, and Exception 2 to section 63 of the Sanhita still provides that sexual acts by a man with his own wife, she not being under eighteen, are not rape. It was read down for wives between fifteen and eighteen in Independent Thought v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 800, and the challenge in respect of adult wives is pending. The second is money and personnel: the Nirbhaya Fund has been persistently under-utilised, fast track courts are frequently existing courts renamed, and the two month investigation deadline in section 193(2) has no sanction attached to its breach.

Conclusion. Violence against women in India is best analysed by the relationship between victim and perpetrator, because that determines the applicable law and the evidentiary problem: the intimate partner category is the largest and is met by sections 80, 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and by the civil machinery of the Act of 2005; the acquaintance category makes consent the contested issue and is why the 2013 definition matters; and the institutional category is met by section 68, which dispenses with proof of force.