Is India ready for A Sex Offender Registry?

On January 15, people across the country were shocked at media reports concerning the arrest of 38-year-old Sunil Rastogi for raping and sexually assaulting minors in December 2016. More than the crime, the city was left reeling by the numbers claimed by Rastogi. Initially charged in three cases in New Ashok Vihar in Delhi, he admitted that over the past 12 years he had assaulted around 500 girls, all of them minors, across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

What makes this confession especially damning is that Rastogi is a repeat offender. He had been detained as far back as 2004 for assaulting two minors in Kalyanpuri in east Delhi and arrested twice in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand for rape in 2006 and 2016. Picking up on this, the Union Women and Child Development Minister, Maneka Gandhi pressed the need for rolling out the sex offenders’ registry (SOR).

Initially proposed by the UPA government in the wake of the December 2012 gangrape in Delhi, the registry would keep a record of each offender’s photograph, address, PAN card details, Aadhaar card number, fingerprints and DNA samples. In an interview with NDTV, Gandhi stated that had there been such a registry, many of Rastogi’s crimes might have been prevented, “This tailor has apparently been caught before in 2006, so if he has been caught before, why is his name not on a national register of sexual offenders?”

Gandhi said the proposal was currently with the Ministry of Home Affairs, which was planning to set up a national register of all criminals, including sex offenders.

In April 2016, Minister of State (MoS) Home, Kiren Rijiju had informed the Rajya Sabha, “Draft guidelines on the proposal to set up Sex Offenders Registry in India are under preparation in consultation with relevant ministries/organisations before they are put out for wider consultation…”. However, eight months later, the government said that it was sceptical about publishing the information of offenders as it can negatively impact the lives of those who “turn out to be innocent” later, making their “return to the mainstream” difficult. Newslaundry reached out to Rijiju with questions about the status of the registry and what all it would contain. This story will be updated to reflect the minister’s response if and when we receive it.

Contrary to Gandhi’s belief, children’s rights activists and organisations working with victims of sexual abuse say that maintaining the SOR is an act of futility without stricter implementation of the criminal justice system.

Statistics shared by Swati Maliwal, the Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW)–who supports the SOR rollout–validates those questioning the utility of the SOR. The “Delhi Police had informed us (DCW) that between 2012 and 2014, 31,446 cases of crime against women and children were registered and 146 were convicted in these cases,” she said. One reason for the shockingly low conviction rate, she said was that many of these cases rarely went beyond the registering the crime. “We were told that around 11,000 First Information Reports (FIR) were filed in 2014 … By the end of February 2016, only 50 per cent cases were investigated … This is very serious matter.”

Additionally, the premise of the registry is that only the data of convicted offenders will be recorded. But, as Child Rights and You’s Puja Marwaha told the Hindustan Times, Rastogi’s would only have figured in such a register if he had been convicted. Conviction rates are among the lowest under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. For 1,072 convictions in 2015, there were 1,418 acquittals.

Anuja Gupta from the RAHI Foundation–an organisation focused on survivors of incest and child sex abuse–argued that a majority of child molesters in India are known to the victim. “Child molesters are living with us, in our houses. What percentage of such cases get reported?” she asked. In her decades long experience, Gupta found that families rarely report such incidents and the existence of an SOR makes little difference.

According to Maliwal, recording the statements of victims of child sex abuse is significantly more difficult than in the case of adults. Enakshi Ganguly, the co-director of HAQ Centre for Child Rights, who has often assisted children in such legal proceedings said that much depends on the individuals dealing with the case. “There are some judges who are just fantastic; the child doesn’t even get to know that they are giving statements. And there are others who are not sensitive enough.” She emphasises on the need for reducing the burden on the courts, training judges, public prosecutors and the police who deal with such sensitive cases. The SOR would simply be a “a knee-jerk reaction” in light of Rastogi’s confession she said.

While these arguments are critical of the effectiveness of the SOR given the poor implementation of law in cases of sexual assault, there is also the matter of rehabilitation. The role of the criminal justice system is not to exact societal retribution, but, ostensibly, reform.

Citing Rastogi, Gupta said that the child molesters are compulsive recidivists and a jail term is not going to have little behavioral effect without rehabilitation. “There has to be a support mechanism. If these problems are not resolved … if such convicts are not rehabilitated, they will re-enter the society without any reform” echoed Ganguly. It is important to note, Rastogi’s arrest for abusing minors in New Ashok Nagar came barely six months after he was released from Haldwani jail.

As horrific as Rastogi’s crimes are, a registry is only as effective as its record keepers. And in this case, resources are perhaps better utilised in following up on cases of abuse and thus ensuring a better rate of conviction than a list that may or may not be filled in.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @amit_bhardwaz