If 2003 has been marred by a succession of high-profile rape cases, it is also a year that began on a propitious note for the law against this crime. For on January 3, the government notified the enforcement of a legal amendment stipulating that in a rape case the victim cannot be questioned or cross-examined about her ‘‘general immoral character’’.

This seemingly innocuous amendment to the Indian Evidence Act came as the culmination of demands that were made from time to time in the wake of the Supreme Court’s acquittal of both the accused policemen in the sensational Mathura rape case in 1979.

Though Mathura was established to have been raped by the uniformed men in their police station, the trial court let them off on the ground that her previous conduct of eloping with her boyfriend indicated she was ‘‘habituated to sexual intercourse’’ and was of ‘‘loose morals’’.

The high court however convicted the policemen ruling that surrender induced by fear could not be construed as consent or desire. But in a verdict that remains a blot on its record, the Supreme Court set aside the conviction and exonerated the policemen stressing the absence of any visible marks of injury on Mathura’s body.

Despite the outrage generated by the Mathura case, the government balked at touching Section 155(4) of the Evidence Act, which permitted the accused to attack her character. But it did make some less radical amendments in 1983 stipulating that the penalty for rape should not be less than seven years of imprisonment, providing for in camera proceedings and making disclosure of the victim’s identity a punishable offence.

The courts on their part sought to live down the Mathura shame by reversing judgments that cast a stigma on the victim’s character or presumed, on some flimsy evidence, that she gave her consent.

But regrettably there have also been cases where the judges continue to show apalling ignorance and shocking bias. For instance, in the Bhanwari Devi case, later made into a movie starring Nandita Das, a judge held that the victim could not have been raped since she was a Dalit while the accused was from an upper caste.

An NCRB report shows a steady, 6.6 per cent increase in the incidence of rape between 1998 and 2000. The courts, in questioning the victim’s character or even caste, have not always helped

Not surprisingly, the latest report of the National Crime Record Bureau studying trends over the period 1998 to 2000 shows a steady increase of 6.6 per cent in the incidence of rape. The statistics vindicate the decision of the Law Commission to harden its stand in 2000 against Section 155(4) of the Evidence Act.

When it first gave a recommendation in this regard in 1980, the Law Commission merely suggested a toning down of the provision so that the questions put to the victim on her past sexual conduct were only vis-a-vis the accused.

But two decades later, given the growing abuse of that provision to scuttle rape cases, the Law Commission recommended a wholesale deletion of Section 155(4).

The Vajpayee government, to its credit, acted on the recommendation with alacrity by enacting the amendment in the winter session of Parliament. Besides deleting Section 155(4), it inserted a proviso to Section 146 stating that it would not be possible to question the victim about her prior sexual conduct.

It’s still too early to judge the difference this will make to the prosecution of rape cases.

Meanwhile, the vastly varying sentencing policy has been another area of controversy in rape cases. So much so that Home Minister L.K. Advani is on record saying more than once that rape should be punished with death.

But significantly the Malimath Committee set up to reform the criminal justice system rejected Advani’s death-for-rape prescription. It said that since death penalty is irreversible, it will make the judges demand higher standard of proof and thereby lower the conviction rate.