Time bar for filing child abuse plaints set to go
New Delhi, Feb. 12: The women and child development (WCD) ministry will seek a change in the CrPC to allow filing of complaints of child sexual abuse many years after the crime.
The development came after a meeting last month between WCD minister Maneka Gandhi and a 53-yearold Indian-origin scientist from Canada, a survivor of child sexual abuse, who asked for legislative amendments to allow victims to report such crimes even years later.
“We are in the process of writing to the ministry of home affairs (MHA) asking them to amend Section 473 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). So, time limitation will go away,” secretary, WCD, R.K. Shrivastava, said at a press meet on Monday.
He said that the ministry will pursue the matter with the MHA as it has been receiving “several complaints of incidents that have occurred many years ago”.
While officials did not comment on the exact amendment being suggested, Ms Gandhi told reporters, “The substance of it will be that if you have been molested at some point in time when you were a minor, then you are still entitled to get justice.”
She, however, said that there could be a problem revisiting old cases of crime.
“Only problem I envisage is that how do you prove it? (But) The best we can hope is that people get frightened that they could land in trouble,” Ms Gandhi said.