In India, children who are victims of sexual abuse have a legal right to have their cases heard in dedicated courts under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act. Today they exist 725 fast track special dishesincluding 392 that deal exclusively with cases of child sexual abuse. It was intended to be a justice system dedicated to protecting children through child-friendly means; Reality says otherwise. Safeguards may be mandated, but how often are they actually enforced and followed? Are the youngest and most vulnerable of us all really protected by the justice system?
Mandatory safeguards: the promise of protection
The POCSO Act stipulates that the protection of children remains a top priority. Accordingly, special protective measures are required to ensure this Child abuse survivors will not be subjected to further trauma during the legal process. Courts that have established a child-friendly environment for vulnerable child witnesses would generally implement certain mandatory safeguards to ensure that child witnesses are protected from exposure to the defendant during testimony.
Under Supreme Court guidelines, district courts are required to establish Vulnerable Witness Deposition Centers (VWDC). The VWDC ensures safety precautions such as separate waiting rooms for child witnesses, comfort items and screens or one-way mirrors during testimony. The witness can also give the statement via live video broadcast from a separate room. Other measures aimed at protecting the child’s emotional well-being include the presence of accompanying persons – a trusted adult and/or a professional support person – who can provide emotional and psychological support. In some cases, the VWDC also has closed rooms to minimize stress and maintain confidentiality.
POCSO Act and implementation gaps: When protection is inadequate
But one study The study, published in February 2025 in the International Journal of Law by researcher Luvanath Ramesh, found that implementation gaps remain. Although these protections are being implemented in some jurisdictions, implementation remains fragmented. Particularly in cases of incest and sexual abuse by a family member, failure of protective measures can result in bereaved children having to confront the accused, who is often a family member, increasing the risk of trauma and emotional distress.
It was intended to be a justice system that works to protect children using child-friendly means; Reality speaks differently. Safeguards may be mandated, but how often are they actually enforced and followed? Are the youngest and most vulnerable of us all really protected by the justice system?
Arushi Anthwal, legal counsel at Counsel to Secure Justice, an organization dedicated to providing access to legal and psychosocial support for survivors of children, recalled a case in which a child was abandoned by his mother, the defendant. “She became teary-eyed and very emotional just seeing her mother entering the courtroom. She was placed behind the screen, but she saw her mother, and only after a long time when she saw her mother,” Anthwal said, further stressing that the plight of the survivors highlighted the need for effective protective measures. Such stories are neither rare nor exceptional; They bear witness to the impact cracks in the justice system are having on the youngest and most vulnerable witnesses.
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While major courtrooms strictly mandate such protections, many district courts in India still do not enforce them. Courthouses constructed before the enactment of the POCSO Act in 2012 were not designed to meet the specific requirements of the law. For example, older courthouses, some over 150 years old, lack separate victim rooms and other child-friendly facilities. In contrast, newer courthouses have incorporated such spaces, which are now used reasonably well; However, many POCSO court proceedings still take place in the older, traditional buildings.
Despite the POCSO Act and the establishment of VWDCs to ensure child-sensitive procedures, implementation gaps remain evident.
Before 2025, the Sonipat district court lacked a fully functional VWDC. Despite the presence of screens, the surviving children ended up having to testify in the same room as the defendant. In 2025, a VWDC was set up at Sonipat District Court, but it is not functioning as planned. Avaantika Chawla, a child rights activist, noted: “Although there was a VWDC, it was not functional… so the child was still sitting in front of the judge and all the lawyers and testifying in open court, which is not the mechanism that should be followed.” Despite the existence of a VWDC, procedural safeguards continue to be ignored, and child survivors remain vulnerable to further traumatization – traumatization that can be prevented even within a small margin. The Sonipat district court is not a special case; There are many such dishes across India, but they are largely overlooked.
This brings with it an uncomfortable truth: the safety and security of a child survivor depends on living in a county where the courts strictly adhere to the prescribed protocols and where there is no more suffering and trauma than they have already endured. Ultimately, this inequality turns out to be a matter of luck determined by geography and economics, rather than a matter of legal justice.
POCSO: Beyond the Courtroom
It is important to note that these failures extend beyond jurisdiction-specific protections. The law is meant for everyone, but ignorance and lack of awareness of one’s rights is a black mark in this country’s justice system. Many families are unaware of their legal rights, which in most cases leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by the very lawyers who are supposed to help them get justice.
Jweriya Usmani, a former counselor at Udayan Care, says, “In all the POCSO cases you know of, they were supposed to get compensation, but most of these parents didn’t get compensation because they didn’t know their rights and didn’t know that they would get compensation.”
Jweriya Usmani, a former counselor at Udayan Care, recalled a case that served as an example of the problem described earlier. A 13-year-old girl was sexually abused by her stepfather. The abuse was discovered when the child’s mother noticed atypical physical symptoms. A medical examination revealed signs of penetration and the mother hired a lawyer to seek justice for her child. The lawyer, who had promised to get the compensation prescribed under the POCSO Act for the already vulnerable family, instead took advantage of their situation by continuously demanding additional payments on the pretext of securing compensation for the survivor. “He just kept demanding money from this woman, and she was a domestic helper who couldn’t afford it, but she still had to pay the lawyer so she could get some kind of compensation,” Usmani noted. “In all the POCSO cases you know, they were supposed to get compensation, but most of these parents didn’t get compensation because they didn’t know their rights and didn’t know they were going to get compensation.”
Because justice operates in this exclusionary manner, it works for very few populations, and the intersection of trauma, poverty, and legal illiteracy highlights that access to justice remains elusive and limited, often dependent on a person’s geographic location, economic means, and general level of knowledge of their rights.
In this way, the country’s most vulnerable population – children, who represent the future and often already bear the burden of trauma – are exposed to additional harm due to failures in the legal system and its authorities and their needs are often not taken seriously. The failure of the legal system exposes them to harm rather than protection.
