Abstract:
This paper asesses the impact of the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
2013 (CLA-2013) on rape adjudication, by examining 1635 rape judgments
from trial courts of Delhi pronounced between 2013 and 2018.
Of these, 726 cases were adjudicated under the old law, of which
16.11% resulted in convictions and 909 cases were adjudicated under
the CLA-2013, of which 5.72% resulted in convictions. Analysing this
data, the paper argues that absence of engagement with criminal
justice literature linking mandatory minimum punishments with
higher acquittal rates, led to unintended consequences, like reduced
convictions under the CLA-2013. The paper also finds similar patterns
between nature of rapes and reasons for acquittal under both laws,
highlighting that mere legal reform, unaccompanied by governance
and social reform, does not yield far-reaching results. The paper
concludes by questioning the use of criminal law as a site for feminist
reform.
