Delhi’s ‘fast-track’ POCSO courts: A vicious cycle of delays, pendency, and trauma for child victims

Names of all those connected with POCSO cases changed to protect the identities of the complainants.

For three years, Shubhangi has made the tedious trek to Delhi’s Saket court. Every time she goes, she hopes to get the chance to complete her testimony in her case, where she was allegedly raped multiple times in 2016, and then impregnated, by a 40 year old man.

Shubhangi was 15 years old at the time.

Now 21, she’s still waiting to complete her testimony at a fast-track court. She’s caught in an endless cycle of court delays over the last five years, including the trauma of coming face to face with her alleged abuser in court.

“What if I marry her off and she is called to court to testify?” said her mother Babita, 51. “What will I tell her in-laws?”

But Shubhangi is just one of nearly 1,500 cases filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, or POCSO, that are all pending trial across five special courts in two districts of the Saket district court. She’s also one of over 9,000 cases pending in 29 POCSO courts across Delhi.

POCSO was introduced in 2012 to counter child abuse and ensure speedy trials. The act maintains that the testimonies of child victims must be completed within 30 days of the court taking cognizance of the offence. The law also mandates that the trial in each case be completed within one year and fast-track courts were set up to complete the trials within a year.

But as multiple people told Newslaundry, rarely do POCSO cases in both special and fast-track courts get completed within a year. Victims often stop following their own cases owing to relentless delays. Each court has a huge pendency and when new courts are introduced to counter the existing pendency, they work at the same pace.

Ninety-nine percent of POCSO cases in Delhi’s courts were pending trial in 2020, according to a report in November by the Praja Foundation. Judgements were passed in one one percent of the cases.

Section 35 of the act mandates that the trial be completed within a year, while Section 28 directs states and union territories to set up special courtrooms to hear POCSO cases in order to achieve this target. In 2019, a central government scheme introduced over 1,000 more POCSO courtrooms across the country.

None of this has helped Shubhangi.

“Fear grips her every time she has to go to court,” said her mother.

A life put on hold

Newslaundry studied Shubhangi’s case with the help of data collated by the HAQ Centre for Child Rights in Delhi. The two accused persons in her case – Ramesh, 40, who is accused of rape, and Rohit, accused of abduction – have been out on bail since 2016.

Shubhangi’s ordeal in court came to a head when she met Ramesh at the Saket court complex in 2019, when she had visited to give her testimony.

“He tried to intimidate her,” Babita said, “and she has been scared to go ever since.”

This happened despite the provision in the law that POCSO courts are supposed to be child-friendly, safe environments.

Babita said, “When she met her lawyer early this year, she just told him one thing, ‘I will do anything but I don’t want to go to court again. Just do something so it stops.’”

Shubhangi’s rape and alleged impregnation took place in 2016. Her family approached the police in September that year, and it took a year and a half for the police to file a chargesheet in 2018. In the interim period, Shubhangi, on the recommendation of a child welfare committee, lived in a shelter home, where Ramesh twice visited to “threaten” her.

The POCSO court took cognizance of the case in February 2018. The first part of her testimony, or chief examination, was recorded on March 12, 2019 – one year after the court took cognizance as opposed to the 30-day period stipulated under the act.

Since 2018, Shubhangi has visited the court eight times over the last 30 months. She hasn’t been to school since 2016. Her family was forced to move for fear of stigma from the neighbours. She spent two “harrowing” years in the shelter home, and is now holed up in a temporary accommodation with her mother in Kalkaji. Her father died of Covid last year, and her older brother cut ties with the family after the alleged rape.

The only time she goes out is to head to court and back. And with the case stuck at the victim testimony stage, nearly 80 percent of the proceedings still remain.

Delhi-based lawyer Zishan Iskandari, who is handling Shubhangi’s case, pointed out that a victim going to court only for no development to take place is a “further aggravation of her problem”.

“It is very traumatic for the child,” said Iskandari, who has worked on over 80 POCSO cases, “in the sense that they have to keep themselves abreast of their assault and are practically not allowed to come out of that experience.”

Delays upon delays

Dhanpal, part of the research team at HAQ Centre, told Newslaundry that he has studied over 400 POCSO cases in Delhi courts. From the stage of cognizance, he said, just three to five percent of cases complete victim testimony within the stipulated 30-day period.

In 63 percent of cases, the victim testimony is completed within three months or a year. In 25 percent of cases, it takes between one or two years to record the entirety of the victim’s testimony.

These delays often result from clerical issues, such as those seen in Shubhangi’s case. In recent times, Covid-related delays have also played a part.

According to a lawyer who has dealt with POCSO cases for the last five years, “six to seven stars have to align inside the courtroom on the same day” for hearings to go as planned.

“The accused counsel and the accused have to be present. The public prosecutor and the judge have to be present,” the lawyer said. “In case of prosecution evidence, the investigating officer has to be present. The witnesses have to be present, and the vulnerable witness room has to be available.”

If even one of these links is missing, the hearing is given a subsequent date – often two months later.

Delhi has 11 court districts falling under six court complexes. Each complex has 29 POCSO courtrooms dealing with cases from across the city’s police stations. Each courtroom must have a special judicial officer or judge, a special public prosecutor, and seven court staffers.

On a Monday in early November, each of the five POCSO courtrooms in the Saket complex, including the fast-track courts, had at least three cases listed from 2015-17.

All the cases were pending at different stages.

The numbers are even more alarming when taken for all 29 POCSO courtrooms as a whole: over 9,000 cases are pending.

The courts collectively passed judgements in just 56 cases last year. Of these, only in two cases out of 56 – or four percent of the total – was the judgement passed within the one-year period. In 43 cases, the trial was completed between one and three years. In the remaining two cases, the trial took between five and 10 years.

“We understand that after factoring in all aspects, it may not be practically possible to meet the one-year deadline,” said lawyer Iskandari. “But sometimes, there are unexplainable and unreasonable delays with cases going on till six years, which is beyond imagination.”

Case in point is when Newslaundry visited the Rohini district court on November 9. A lawyers’ strike was in progress, so none of the lawyers in any of Delhi’s district courts were at work. Judges in two courtrooms were on leave. At least three families of witnesses were seen leaving the court unattended.

Across courts, it can only be imagined how many hearings were deferred in total.

Combatting pendency with pendency

In 2019, given the growing number of POCSO cases not meeting their one-year targets, the central government, on the direction of the Supreme Court, introduced a new scheme to set up 1,023 fast-track special courts – or FTSCs – for expeditious trials in both POCSO and rape cases across India.

Of these, 389 courts were exclusively for POCSO cases. Across states and union territories, 389 districts with more than 100 POCSO cases filed were identified to set up fast-track courts. More courts could also be ordered by respective high courts, depending on the pendency of cases in their jurisdictions.

The courts would be 60 percent funded by the centre, and the remaining 40 percent by the respective state or union territory. Rs 767.25 crore was earmarked for the project, with each court having an operational budget of Rs 75 lakh.

At the time, Delhi had 16 POCSO courts, each with a pendency of 200-500 cases. With the new scheme, Delhi got 14 new fast-track courts too – and each already has a pendency of over 200 cases.

These courts would not be permanent structures; they would operate for one year and be extended based on quarterly evaluations. In 2019, the central government approved the continuation of 1,023 FTSCs across India with a funding of Rs 1,572.86 crore.

The plan was that each FTSC would dispose of at least 165 cases a year.

This, unsurprisingly, has not happened.

According to 2021 data from the ministry of law and justice, 16 of Delhi’s FTSCs had only disposed of 27 cases in total until July this year. They had a total pendency of 4,115 cases as of June this year.

The monthly pendency data makes a bad situation even worse.

For instance, an FTSC in the Rohini court complex has 426 pending POCSO cases as of this October. Another in the Tis Hazari court complex has 249 pending POCSO cases; a third in the same complex has 225. In the Saket court complex, one FTSC has 208 pending cases; the number for a Dwarka FTSC is 237.

‘Even family has stopped following the case’

Newslaundry analysed data in two other cases pending in Delhi courts, where the trials have been stuck at two different stages.

In 2013, Meena was sexually assaulted multiple times by her father. She was 16 years old at the time. According to her lawyer, Ashish Kumar, who is also the legal director at HAQ Centre for Child Rights, there had been a prolonged history of domestic violence instigated by her father on her, her mother, and her younger brother. Her mother only reported the matter to the police when Meena was sexually assaulted.

A special POCSO court in Karkardooma registered the matter in December 2013. It took cognizance of the case in January 2014.

Hearings continued productively – albeit over a long period of time – until 2017. The prosecution evidence concluded in May 2017.

Then the delays began.

The accused’s statement was heard over 10 hearings from May 2017 to March 2018. The most striking delay, however, was in the court’s pronouncement of the judgement. Twenty-four hearings have taken place from September 2018 to November this year – but the order on judgement has not been passed yet.

Of these 24 hearings, the accused or his lawyer was absent seven times. In one case, the lawyers’ strike disrupted proceedings. Covid restrictions impacted five hearings, and the court did not have enough time 11 times.

Alarmed by the delay, the advocate in this case, Kumar, insisted at the last hearing that coercive steps be taken against the accused, whose absence on multiple occasions had contributed to the delay. It should be noted that the accused has been out on bail since proceedings began.

“The court finally issued a non-bailable warrant against the accused,” Kumar said. “The case had actually reached the stage of final order but was again sent back to the final arguments stage as the judge got transferred.”

Delayed justice sets a bad precedent, he added.

“The family has stopped following the case now and even asking about it,” he said. “But it will not go away from their memory.”

The other case we studied involves the rape of a 16-year-old girl, Neha, with the alleged involvement of seven people.

The police filed the chargesheet in August 2019, but charges have not been framed by the court. The court is yet to hear the arguments on charge, implying that nearly 90 percent of proceedings remain. Charges are framed after the court hears arguments on both sides once, peruses the chargesheet and evidence, and then decides which sections the accused will be charged with.

But in the 26 hearing dates spread across two years, this still has not happened. The major reasons for the delay include the absence of the accused or their lawyers, and the matter being cancelled since they required physical hearings, not Covid’s virtual hearings, or not being heard at all due to lockdown restrictions.

The delay is exacerbated by the fact that there are multiple accused involved – seven in this case. One is in a state prison for another crime, two others are in a separate prison, the other four are in a third prison.

In such a situation, Kumar said, it depends on the probability of all the accused showing up on a single court date – all the prison guards in all three prisons must bring them to court on the date listed.

This has not happened since 2019.

Does someone take note of the unexplainable delays?

Yes, Kumar said, but in a very skewed way.

“There’s a quarterly report of POCSO courts on the Delhi High Court website,” he said. “That report only reflects the date of POCSO cases that are older than five or more years.”

This despite POCSO cases having a mandate to be completed in one year.

“Why are we recording it like normal matters?” said Kumar. “Every time, we prepare for a case, relearn its specifics. But we are never sure if the hearing will happen the next day, or two months later.”

Graphs by Gobindh VB.