Madras High Court gets cheerful, child-friendly courtroom
A child-friendly court room is set to be inaugurated at the Madras High Court on Tuesday. Designed specifically to protect and insulate children appearing in Courts against the harsh and demanding conditions associated with a courtroom, the move is expected to improve the response of justice dispensation system to vulnerable child witnesses and victims.
By : migrator
Update: 2017-07-17 20:02 GMT
Chennai
The Child Friendly Deposition Room/Court set up at the third floor of the additional building of City Civil Court on the high court campus is based on the feature envisioned under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, 2012.
Ranging from in-camera facilities and one-way mirrors to protect the identity of the child, thrust has also been offered on the ambience in a bid to create a non-threatening environment.
The court has a waiting area filled with toys and colourful furniture and there will be no such thing as a witness box. Besides this, the judge and other personnel will be in plain clothes, so that the place does not have any semblance of a court hall.
The other highlights of such a court room, which has already come into being in Goa, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru is that in a bid to preserve the child’s dignity, it is pertinent that the child is not subjected to aggressive examination.
Moreover, with the judge not sitting on a pedestal it paves way for the child to have direct interaction with the judge, while the accused can view and hear proceedings through a two-way video conferencing system.
This allows the child to identify the accused without physical interface. Justice S Vimala, who has been dealing with a range of POCSO cases, said, “The whole idea is to ensure that the child is at ease when it is offering its testimony and that the process does not add to up to the trauma it has already undergone.
However, a lot depends on effective implementation so that the child-friendly court serves the purpose for which it has been created.” As per the 2015 data of the National Crime Records Bureau, 1090 cases and victims were reported under POCSO Act.
However, the refrain around child rights activist remains around lack of designated lawyers’ familiar with POCSO Act resulting in perpetrators against children going scot free most of the time.
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