Victim Emancipation With Reference To Section 357 Of CrPC

Muskan Malhotra, Amity Law School, Noida

RESEARCH PROBLEM

“Law should not sit limply, while those who defy it go free and those who seek its protection lose hope.”

The carriage of justice is often misconceived to halt at the signature on a judgment, however, the true destination lies at the lap of the victim. The framework of justice in India has been largely oblivious to what would constitute true vindication to the victim. The ambit of justice has fixated to merely mean the conviction of the accused. There is a lack of infrastructure within the Indian judicial system to support or accommodate development in the process. This, in turn, affects the quality of justice offered to the victim. Justice, hence, must be reformative for the purpose of the perpetrator and rehabilitative for the survivor. The victim must be given rehabilitative support including monetary compensation. It also remains that victim of a crime, including her/his kith and kin carry a legitimate expectation that the State will ‘catch and punish’ the guilty and compensate the aggrieved. Even in the event of the failure of the machinery of justice in identifying the accused or if it falls short in collecting and presenting requisite evidence to ensure appropriate sentencing of the guilty, the duty of compensation remains. The development of victim centric jurisprudence must transcend legislative necessity and afford participating instruments flexibility to respond to the diverse needs of a victim. Compensation must be actualized in the sense of realizing rehabilitation for the victim.