The Congress on Friday said the judiciary has delivered justice to the young woman brutally gangraped and murdered on an empty moving bus in Delhi in 2012 but slammed the government on its "sorry state of affairs" in implementing the Nirbhaya Fund for safety of women.
Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amee Yajnik alleged that no details have been made available about the Fund for which a budgetary allocation of thousands of crores of rupees has been made.
Justice for Nirbhaya has been delivered by the legal system and the judicial system but the implementation of the law and the Nirbhaya Fund has not happened, she told reporters.
"It is a sorry state of affairs. I think, the government should speak up about its plan or its roadmap to ensure safety and security of the women of this country," she said.
"Can any woman in India say 'Yes! Nirbhaya Fund has made my life fearless'? Can she see any mahila police station? Can she see any counselling centre," she asked.
Yajnik said the Fund was meant to start initiatives and support NGOs to ensure safety of women.
According to the 2018 NCRB data, 34,000 rapes are reported in the country but the conviction rate is only 25-27 per cent, Yajnik noted.
"It is a sad day that we have to talk about delays in the justice system and I think this is the time when we need to look at law reforms, legal reforms, judicial reforms and why these systems are not giving justice to women at the right time, within a timeline. The Ministry of Law and Justice has forgotten what kind of allocation should be there in order to have the infrastructure to facilitate women...to fight for justice.
"This was a lone battle fought by the family of Nirbhaya, but what has the government been doing with all these laws, with all these departments and with all these initiatives started earlier," she said adding that it was time for the government to take the initiative to stop "this multiplicity of appeals" to delay the judicial process.
Citing the Unnao rape incident, where a girl was burnt alive when she was going to a court for hearing in the case, the Congress leader said, "I think not a single woman minister recollect that, today they speak, but none of the woman ministers spoke up for the victim."
Congress MP Chhaya Verma said a new dawn has arisen. She, however, questioned the delay in the grant of justice to parents of Nirbhaya. "Somewhere our legal system is weak," she noted.
Verma demanded that anti-rape laws should be made effective and implemented properly.
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