State of Himachal Pradesh vs Sanjay Kumar @ Sunny - Supreme Court Case

 State of Himachal Pradesh vs Sanjay Kumar @ Sunny - Supreme Court Important Judgment 2016 - 

On 15th December, 2016, in the case of State of Himachal Pradesh vs Sanjay Kumar @ Sunny [Criminal Appeal No. 1231 of 2016], while convicting the respondent for raping his nine year old niece, the Supreme Court observed that the reluctance on the part of the prosecutrix (PW-2) in not narrating the incident to anybody for a period of three years and not sharing the same event with her mother (PW-1) was “clearly understandable.” It was observed that “in cases of incestuous abuse, more often, silence is built into the abuse.”


 The Bench further observed that likewise, delay of three days in lodging the FIR by PW-1, after eliciting information from her daughter PW-2, was inconsequential in the facts of the case. It was observed that “most of the time, acquaintance rapes, when the culprit is a family member, are not even reported for various reasons, not difficult to fathom. The strongest among those is the fear of attracting social stigma. Another deterring factor which many times prevent such victims or their families to lodge a complaint is that they find whole process of criminal justice system extremely intimidating coupled with absence of victim protection mechanism. Therefore, time is ripe to bring about significant reforms in the criminal justice system as well. Equally, there is also a dire need to have a survivor centric approach towards victims of sexual violence, particularly, the children, keeping in view the traumatic long lasting effects on such victims.”

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