‘Delay diminishes value of justice for the victim’
LUCKNOW: There is no dearth of laws to check sexual abuse, time-bound action and fixing of accountability is the need of the hour.
“If justice is not delivered quickly, its value goes down for the victim. Justice should not be delayed,” the mother of 2012 Delhi gang rape victim said while addressing the HT Woman Award function here on Sunday.
“I have been working for rape victims through our trust that we set up after our daughter’s death. I come across so many cases where DNA samples get distorted and evidences get destroyed due to delay. Unless we ensure time-bound justice, we can never be fair to victims,” she added.
She urged the people to accept victims as part of the society. “We worry about their image. We feel that if such instances come to light, it would bring shame to our daughters and their families. We start worrying about their marriage. It is high time we thought beyond these issues,” she said. Crime against women would continue if people tolerated, she said, adding that people should raise their voice against it.
“When you keep food covered for long, it gets rotten. Similarly, if you keep on bearing sexual abuse silently, things would only worsen,” she said.
She urged chief minister Yogi Adityanath to ensure such crimes were not politicised. “My fight is not personal. It is against a crime which affects innocent girls daily,” she said.
Observing that often parents are responsible for making their daughters weak, she said: “We as parents and family discriminate between sons and daughters. We need to look at them as children, irrespective of their gender. We should make girls strong enough to fight against all odds.”
She welcomed decisions in Asaram and Gurmeet Ram Rahim cases and said the system should ensure speedy justice to victims.