Authored By: Priyanka Oraon
Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College
Introduction
Consider a rape survivor in a small district town. The law promises her two things: her name will be protected, and she will receive compensation. Both promises are real. Both are enforceable. But when she walks into the District Legal Services Authority office located, as it often is, inside the same compound as the district court she may find that pursuing one makes the other harder to keep. That tension is the subject of this article.
India’s criminal justice system has developed two parallel frameworks. The first protects the identity of victims of sexual violence. The second entitles them to monetary compensation regardless of whether the accused is convicted. Each framework, taken alone, reflects a serious legal commitment. Together, however, they create a procedural conflict that has received surprisingly little attention. A survivor who seeks compensation must, under current procedure, submit a named application, produce personal documents, and engage with a public legal authority. The very act of claiming relief may expose the identity the law elsewhere works to protect.
This article argues that the victim compensation framework under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is structurally incompatible with the identity protection framework as it presently operates. That incompatibility is not a theoretical concern it is a practical deterrent. The article proceeds in three parts: the legal framework governing identity protection; the points at which the compensation process creates exposure; and a targeted reform proposal.
The Legal Framework
The protection of a victim’s identity in Indian law draws on both constitutional and statutory sources. In K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, the Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution.[1] For survivors of sexual violence, that right is not abstract. Disclosure of identity can lead to social exclusion, loss of employment, family rupture, and in the worst cases further violence. The constitutional protection is therefore directly engaged.
At the statutory level, section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 criminalises the disclosure of a rape or acid-attack victim’s identity.[2] Section 386 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 requires that trials in sexual offence cases be conducted in camera.[3] Section 23 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 imposes a strict bar on media disclosure of a child victim’s identity.[4] In Nipun Saxena v. Union of India, the Supreme Court went further, directing courts to use pseudonyms in all orders involving sexual offence victims a direction that recognised identity protection as inseparable from the right to dignity.[5]
The compensation framework operates alongside this. Section 397 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 requires every State Government to establish a victim compensation scheme.[6] Compensation is available even where the accused remains unidentified or the case does not reach conviction a provision of particular importance to survivors who are unable or unwilling to sustain a trial. In Ankush Shivaji Gaikwad v. State of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court held that courts have a duty not merely a discretion to consider compensation in every conviction.[7] The NALSA Model Victim Compensation Scheme, 2018 has further standardised this framework across states.[8]
Read in isolation, neither framework raises obvious difficulties. The conflict emerges when a survivor attempts to use both simultaneously.
III. The Compensation Paradox
The process of claiming compensation creates several points at which identity may be exposed. The survivor or her representative must file a named application supported by an FIR, medical records, and identity documents. The application is processed by the District Legal Services Authority, typically located within a district court complex and operating through standard legal procedures. If the claim is disputed, a hearing may follow. Disbursement ordinarily requires bank account details linked to the claimant’s name.
None of these steps is unreasonable in isolation. The problem is cumulative. The survivor’s name moves through the court, the DLSA, the police, and the bank. There is no express statutory mechanism that imposes confidentiality on this route to compensation in the same way that section 386 BNSS imposes it on trials. A survivor cannot, under present procedure, submit her compensation claim through a mechanism that genuinely shields her identity.
The problem is significantly worse in smaller towns and rural districts. A visit to the district court complex may itself reveal the survivor’s presence to the local community. For child victims, a guardian’s public appearance in a compensation proceeding may indirectly identify the child. For acid-attack survivors a group whose injuries are often visible and who have significant compensation entitlements under Supreme Court directions in Laxmi v. Union of India anonymity may be practically impossible to maintain.[9]
Digitisation adds a further layer of difficulty. If compensation orders contain the survivor’s real name, the harm does not end with the proceeding. Records that are searchable and publicly accessible can cause lasting damage unless strict redaction practices are followed. The law protects identity in principle. The compensation process does not reliably secure that protection in practice.
The result is a deterrent effect. Survivors who are aware of the exposure risk may choose not to claim compensation rather than risk re-identification. The compensation scheme was intended to provide relief to those who cannot obtain it through the criminal process alone as the Supreme Court recognised in Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum v. Union of India.[10] Where the process of claiming that relief itself creates the harm the law elsewhere prevents, the remedial purpose of the scheme is undermined.
Reform Proposal
The mismatch described above is not inevitable. Three targeted reforms would go a considerable way toward resolving it.
First, courts should extend the pseudonym directions from Nipun Saxena explicitly to compensation proceedings arising from sexual offences and POCSO cases. At present, those directions apply to trial orders. There is no clear authority extending them to DLSA proceedings or compensation orders. A Supreme Court clarification or a legislative amendment would close that gap.
Second, section 397 BNSS should be amended to permit applications to be filed through legal aid counsel, without requiring the survivor’s personal appearance or the submission of personally identifying documents beyond what is strictly necessary for disbursement. Several states already permit limited-appearance procedures in sensitive matters; this approach is not unfamiliar to Indian procedural law.
Third, and more ambitiously, compensation in sexual offence cases should be administered through a dedicated confidential mechanism separate from the general DLSA process that handles claims through closed records, restricts access to identifying information, and disburses funds through protected channels. This is not a radical proposal. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in the United Kingdom operates on precisely this model, and the Indian Legal Services Authorities already have the administrative infrastructure to support a modified version of it.
Whether such a mechanism would require fresh legislation or could be established through executive scheme-making is a question that admits of more than one answer. What seems clear is that the current framework does not adequately address the problem, and that the direction of reform is correct.
Conclusion
India’s law already contains two serious commitments: protecting the identity of sexual offence victims, and ensuring that they receive compensation. The difficulty is that these commitments are not coordinated. A survivor may be protected in principle and exposed in practice the moment she seeks relief.
That contradiction matters because it is not merely procedural. It determines whether the compensation framework functions as a genuine remedy or remains inaccessible to the survivors most in need of it those who cannot sustain a criminal trial, who live in small communities where anonymity is fragile, and who face the prospect of compounded harm if their identity becomes known.
Compensation is a remedial right. It should not require public self-identification to access. If Article 21 means what the Supreme Court said it means in Puttaswamy that privacy is central to dignity then the victim compensation framework must be redesigned so that the act of claiming relief does not itself become a source of harm. That is the reform this article urges.
Bibliography
Cases
Ankush Shivaji Gaikwad v. State of Maharashtra, (2013) 6 SCC 770.
Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum v. Union of India, (1995) 1 SCC 14.
K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
Laxmi v. Union of India, (2014) 4 SCC 427.
Nipun Saxena v. Union of India, (2019) 2 SCC 703.
Legislation
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
Other Sources
National Legal Services Authority, Model Victim Compensation Scheme, 2018.
Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (UK), available at https://www.gov.uk/claim compensation-criminal-injury.
[1]K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
[2]Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, § 72.
[3]Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, § 386.
[4]Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, § 23.
[5]Nipun Saxena v. Union of India, (2019) 2 SCC 703.
[6]Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, § 397.
[7]Ankush Shivaji Gaikwad v. State of Maharashtra, (2013) 6 SCC 770.
[8]National Legal Services Authority, Model Victim Compensation Scheme, 2018.
[9]Laxmi v. Union of India, (2014) 4 SCC 427.
[10]Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum v. Union of India, (1995) 1 SCC 14.
