4,512 POCSO cases pending trial in city, up from last year
New Delhi: While the Covid-19 pandemic has had its impact on the Capital's legal machinery with all trial courts and the High Court conducting hearings through video-conferencing, it has dealt a body blow to cases registered under the POCSO Act (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) with around 4,512 cases pending trial before six district courts till April this year, an increase of at least 600 from the same time last year.
As per the data available with the six district courts in the city, comprising 18 special POCSO courts, seen by Millennium Post, around 4,512 cases are pending trial till April in comparison to last April, till when at least 3,937 cases were pending.
According to the figures, at Saket court, 665 cases were shown pending trial. Similarly, at Rohini court, as many as 1,071 cases were pending. At Dwarka court, 857 cases were pending while at Tis Hazari, 673 cases were pending trial. Meanwhile, at Patiala House and Karkardooma court, at least 534 and 712 cases were pending trial respectively.
Significantly, both in 2020 and this year, POCSO cases have been among the highest of all criminal and civil cases pending before district courts. According to the Delhi Police, 65 POCSO crimes have been reported in 2020, down from 109 in 2019, and the solve percentage in 2020 was 94 per cent.
An analysis of recent NCRB reports has also shown that most POCSO cases in the capital remain pending for one to three years.
While pendency in POCSO cases is not a new phenomenon, lawyers and prosecutors claim that Covid has further hampered an already broken system while exacerbating the minor victim's trauma due to the incident. To be sure, since March last year when courts shut down due to Covid, till now, only urgent bail matters are being taken up and trials have halted.
Advocate Ashish Kumar, working with HAQ Centre for Child Rights who has represented child victims of sexual abuse, said that such delay in trial causes the victim to forget minute details of the crime which are crucial during testimony. "We can't expect her to remember every detail after such a huge gap...counsels have to refresh their memory," Kumar said, citing a legal provision where a victim's statement is supposed to be recorded within 30 days of the chargesheet's cognisance.
Advocate Deeksha Dwivedi, who has handled over 40 such cases, said that cases of rapes among infants and teenagers alike were reported more during the lockdown as all family members were holed up inside their homes.
Dwivedi said that even after trial begins, since most victims have gone back to their hometowns, convincing them to return is an uphill task and summons issued to them might return unserved.
"The system of taking victim testimony through VC is abysmal in Delhi, the statements are too sensitive," she said. "Crucial forensic reports too will take a lot of time to be filed due to Covid," she said, adding that even the compensation to victims, most of whom come from impoverished families, will be delayed.
Advocate Tara Narula, also associated with HAQ and who has handled over 30 cases, said that while trials have stopped altogether, difficulty arises when the accused has to be present physically before court during framing of charges, which has been taking place. "Apart from Covid, the infrastructure is weak as there aren't enough vulnerable witness rooms inside the court, further creating a backlog," she claimed.
A prosecutor attached with the Rohini Court, requesting anonymity, agreed that Covid will have a significant impact in presiding over POCSO cases. "There will be a massive delay as courts are shut and trials have stopped...the delay affects the psychology of the victims, they might turn hostile due to family pressure and internal settlement...many witnesses too have gone to their villages and issuing them summons will also be quite a task," she said.
