Mumbai gangrape: Justice JS Verma's recommendations might have helped

When the Justice Verma Commission, formed after the Delhi gangrape of last December, submitted its report early this year for ensuring expeditious punishment in cases of sexual assault, the recommendations were welcomed as seminal and path-breaking.

Eight months and one more gangrape later, it emerges that many of those recommendations have mostly vanished from public memory and, more tragically, from the memory of government authorities charged with providing women safer public spaces and more effective policing.

A series of recommendations made by the Verma Commission with a view to introducing policing reforms and for a more effective response system in cases of rape and sexual assault could have well been adopted by the state government. Expectedly, these have been completely ignored by the Maharashtra state government.

Key among these was the recommended ‘rape crisis cell’, which is notified every time there is a First Information Report bearing a complaint of rape. The cell would then dispatch a qualified person to provide legal assistance and counselling to the survivor.

Not only is the Maharashtra government yet to consider this recommendation, but a special cell of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch set up to investigate crime against women has also mostly twiddled its thumbs since its inception, according to this report.  

Even more pathbreaking was the Verma Commission’s recommendation regarding filing FIRs online, also not implemented.

Apart from these, the committee recommended introducing wide-ranging police reforms including the establishment of state security commissions headed by the chief minister or deputy chief minister to prevent undue exertion of government pressure on the force. Police Establishment Boards were also recommended to have a final word on police transfers and postings, that favourite subject for political interference. While a minimum tenure was also envisaged for DGPs and IGs, none of these recommendations has seen the light of day in Maharashtra.

Worse, the home department and the office of the director general of police witnessed an embarrassing tussle over the power to transfer junior and mid-level police personnel earlier this year, before Home Minister RR Patil finally restored the DGP’s powers to transfer.

Other recommendations of the commission, ranging from special training for policemen to deal with crimes against women to community policing for better vigilance, have been introduced sporadically but have mostly been false starts.