Context

• Recent reforms in India’s criminal justice system have been hailed as progressive and pro-women, yet the suicide of a young doctor in Phaltan, Maharashtra in October 2025 offers a stark reminder that law alone cannot safeguard dignity.
• The doctor, who died by suicide after alleging rape and harassment by a police official and another man, left behind a message written on her palm.
• The tragedy reveals not only the harm inflicted by the original alleged crime but also a deeper systemic failure: institutions and society waging a second crime against victims through character assassination, public shaming, and administrative apathy.

The Two Crimes: Harm and Betrayal

• The first crime emerges from the failure of state mechanisms, the police, administrators, and protective institutions, that disregarded the doctor’s pleas for help.
• The second crime unfolds in the public sphere, where the victim’s family, in their pursuit of justice, must endure insinuations, moral judgment, and media scrutiny.
• This pattern unfolded visibly when the Chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women publicised private details about the victim’s personal communication and relationships.
• While framed as contextual information, such disclosures fuel society’s deeply rooted culture of victim-blaming.
• This episode exposes a disturbing contradiction: even institutions designed to protect women often reproduce patriarchal narratives that define a woman’s dignity in terms of sexual purity, moral behaviour, and conformity.

The Legal Mandate: Protecting Dignity as Justice

• Ban on character evidence
  • Section 53A of the Indian Evidence Act (now Section 50 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023) prohibits using a woman’s personal history, friendships, or sexual life to argue consent or suggest she deserved the crime.
• Restrictions on cross-examination
  • Amendments to Section 146 (now Section 48 of the BSA) prevent questioning a victim on her general immoral character or previous sexual experience.
• Protection of identity
  • The ban on disclosing the identity of sexual assault victims (formerly Section 228A IPC, now Section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) exists specifically to prevent stigma, protect dignity, and avoid the public humiliation that often silences victims.
  • Together, these provisions attempt to shift the burden of scrutiny from the victim’s moral credibility to the facts of the crime.

Judicial Interpretation: Dignity as a Constitutional Principle

• The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly reinforced this shift.
• In State of Punjab v. Gurmit Singh (1996), the Court warned against discounting a woman’s testimony on the basis of perceived loose morals, asserting that prior sexual history is irrelevant to consent.
• The Court has also condemned practices that subject victims to hyper-scrutiny, noting that such interrogation adds insult to injury.
• The dissemination of the Phaltan victim’s dying declaration to the media violated not just the identity-protection regime but also the spirit of judicial doctrine.
• It created a social verdict in which the victim’s character, rather than the accused’s actions, became the focal point of public discourse.
• The complainant’s lawyers being denied access to investigation reports further exemplifies the asymmetry of power victims face.

Institutional Betrayal and the Limits of Reform

• The Phaltan case exposes the gulf between law on paper and law in practice.
• The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, signals the State’s intent to build a more women-centric criminal justice system, yet the social mindset remains anchored in patriarchy.
• When a constitutional or political authority, especially a woman, engages in character assassination, it represents not only moral failure but also a betrayal of the solidarity necessary for gender justice.
• The consequences are profound: victims stop reporting, families retreat from legal battles, and public discourse shifts blame from perpetrators to victims. Legal systems cannot function in a social vacuum.

Bridging the Gap: Implementation as Transformation

• Training & Sensitization:
  • Police, prosecutors, and judges must be educated in trauma-informed approaches to sexual violence. The current culture of suspicion and disbelief deepens victims’ suffering.
• Ending Victim-Blaming
  • Public discourse must evolve to reject character-based judgments. Investigations should be victim-friendly rather than adversarial.
• Resource Expansion
  • Forensic and digital infrastructure, legal aid, women's desks, audio-visual statement systems, and psychological services are essential to enforce new legal standards rather than merely declare them.

Conclusion

• The Phaltan tragedy forces India to confront a fundamental question: can criminal law protect women when society, media, and institutions continue to police their morality?
• The answer remains uncertain; Laws may evolve, but justice requires alignment between statute, institutional practice, and social consciousness.
• The moment demands that women in authority not only occupy positions of power but embody constitutional morality, recognizing dignity, equality, and empathy as non-negotiable values.