Woman advocates to give dead law new life in Gurgaon

To effectively implement a little-known law which mandates that every rape victim who files a police complaint in Haryana must be accompanied by an advocate -- preferably a woman – at police stations, Gurgaon’s district and session judge B B Prasoon recently invited women advocates to join the legal services forum.

This was done to pump a new lease of life into the dormant rule which — according to a model scheme of Haryana Legal Services Authority (HLSA) implemented in 2009 — is applicable across the 21 districts of Haryana.

The model scheme was follow-up action on a Supreme Court ruling in Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum versus Union of India, 1995 which directed that every rape victim must have  legal representation.

The model scheme clearly states: “The police would be duty bound to inform the victim of her right of getting such representation before the victim is quizzed. The police would maintain a register detailing the time and manner of such information given to the victim.”
But in practice most police stations don’t maintain any such register as they are not aware of the Haryana Legal Services Authority scheme.

When Deccan Herald called an inspector posted at a police station in DLF area, he said, “We file a complaint whether the victim is accompanied or not by an advocate.

“Moreover, we don’t have any list of advocates who can be called to be present if the victim doesn’t have legal representation with her.”

A woman advocate, who is part of the panel for two police stations, confirmed that she was not called even once by either of them in the past three years of her association with the forum.

Even the city’s police commissioner K K Sindhu is unaware of such a provision. “I am not aware of this. We don’t entertain these things,” said Sindhu.

Some women advocates, who were recently brought on board under HLSA, also believe that this is a new provision.