The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the National Legal Services Authority’s scheme for compensating victims of sexual assault and similar crimes will be extended to minors, PTI reported. The scheme and the guidelines will be operational from October 2, the top court said.
The Supreme Court had approved the compensation scheme for survivors of sexual assault in May. According to it, a person who has been sexually assaulted will get around Rs 4 lakh to Rs 7 lakh as compensation, while victims of gangrape will get up to Rs 10 lakh. In case of disfigurement of the face in acid attacks, the victims will get a minimum compensation of Rs 7 lakh.
The top court observed that the Centre had framed no rules for compensation to minor victims of sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. “We are of the opinion that the NALSA compensation scheme should function as the guidelines for special courts [under the POCSO Act] to award compensation to victims of sexual abuses until rules are formalised by the central government,” the court said.
It also asked special courts to ensure that the compensation awarded to minor victims is not misused. “We direct that wide publicity be given to the scheme as well as the order passed by us today on regular basis till rules are finalised by the central government,” it said.
The National Legal Services Authority told a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, Deepak Gupta and S Abdul Nazeer that the POCSO Act will be amended and may be brought before Parliament during the next session.
Meanwhile, a lawyer argued that if a woman was raped, the amount of compensation should be fixed for a particular category of offence and should not vary. The counsel said cases of rape, gangrape and loss of life in such incidents cannot be categorised in percentage. “The Indian Penal Code has made a difference between an offence of rape and gangrape,” the court said, according to PTI. “We have to look at some principles. It cannot be totally that it has to be a fixed amount.”
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