Centering Victims in India’s Criminal Justice Reforms

India’s criminal justice system has long been built around a single central relationship: the state versus the accused. The victim – the person who actually suffered the harm – has historically been reduced to a witness, a source of evidence, and little else. They watch from the sidelines as lawyers argue, judges deliberate, and the state drives the prosecution. But this is changing. A growing body of legislative reform, judicial interpretation, and policy debate is pushing India toward a victim-oriented approach to criminal justice – one that places the needs, rights, and participation of victims at the heart of the process, not its margins.

The victim as a forgotten stakeholder 🔗

The traditional model of criminal justice treats crime as an offence against society and the state, not against a specific individual. While this has theoretical logic – crime disrupts public order – it produces a practical problem: the actual victim is sidelined. They cannot direct the investigation, cannot oppose bail of the accused, and in many cases, cannot even afford a lawyer to represent their interests in court. The prosecution is conducted by a Public Prosecutor who is instructed by the police – not by the victim. As the Supreme Court noted in Zahira Habibulla H. Sheikh v. State of Gujarat, a Public Prosecutor may not even be aware of critical facts that only the victim possesses.

The 2003 Malimath Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System was candid about this failure. It observed that victims feel ignored and are crying for attention and justice, and concluded that criminal justice administration would take a new direction toward better and quicker justice only once victims’ rights are formally recognised by law. That recognition has been slow but is now accelerating.

Defining the victim: a starting point 🔗

Before rights can be granted, the law must first define who a victim is. The 2008 amendment to the CrPC introduced Section 2(wa) for the first time, defining a “victim” as any person who suffers injury or loss due to the act or omission with which the accused is charged – including their guardian and legal heir. This definition carried over into the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023 under Section 2(y), which came into force on July 1, 2024, replacing the CrPC. The definition is deliberately broad – it captures physical, mental, and economic harm, and extends to families of direct victims. This breadth matters because it signals that the law is beginning to see victimhood in its full complexity.

The shift in compensation: from offender to state 🔗

For most of India’s post-independence legal history, compensation for victims depended entirely on the accused being convicted and fined. If the offender was acquitted, absconded, or lacked the means to pay, the victim received nothing. This changed significantly in 2009 when Section 357A was inserted into the CrPC – a provision that made victim compensation a state obligation, not just an offender’s liability.

Under Section 357A, every State Government was directed to prepare a scheme for providing funds to compensate victims or their dependents who have suffered loss or injury as a result of crime and require rehabilitation. Crucially, compensation could be awarded in four distinct scenarios: upon conviction, upon acquittal, upon discharge of the accused, and even when the offender is neither traced nor identified. This was a fundamental shift – it decoupled the victim’s right to compensation from the outcome of the criminal trial.

The BNSS has continued this framework under Section 396, which mandates state-funded compensation schemes and, importantly, makes provision for interim compensation regardless of conviction. This is significant: victims no longer have to wait for the conclusion of what can be a years-long trial before receiving any financial support. Additionally, the Central Victim Compensation Fund (CVCF), established by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2015, supplements state schemes specifically for victims of rape, acid attacks, human trafficking, and cross-border violence – recognising that some categories of victims require prioritised support.

The problem of uneven implementation 🔗

Despite this legislative progress, implementation remains inconsistent. Each state was mandated to draft its own victim compensation scheme, resulting in widely varying standards across India. Compensation amounts, eligibility criteria, and procedural timelines differ substantially from state to state – a consequence of leaving too much discretion to individual state governments without minimum central standards. Victims often face significant delays in receiving compensation, sometimes waiting weeks or months, which worsens their financial distress and limits access to timely medical care. This disparity is one of the most pressing unresolved challenges in India’s victim compensation architecture.

Victim participation in trials: from witness to stakeholder 🔗

One of the most significant conceptual shifts in recent years is the move to treat victims as active participants in criminal proceedings rather than passive witnesses. The BNSS introduces several provisions that give this shape in practice.

The right to be heard before prosecution withdrawal 🔗

Under the old CrPC, the Public Prosecutor could withdraw from a case at any time before judgment, with only the court’s consent. The victim had no right to be heard at this stage – a gap that allowed politically motivated withdrawals to go unchallenged. Section 360 of the BNSS plugs this gap by mandating that the victim must be heard before any withdrawal from prosecution is permitted. This is described by the Press Information Bureau as a significant example of a “nyaya-centric” (justice-centric) approach to criminal procedure. For the first time, the victim is formally a stakeholder whose voice the court must consider before the state steps back from its own case.

Right to information at every stage 🔗

The BNSS expands the victim’s right to information across three key stages of the process. First, victims are entitled to receive a free copy of the FIR – a foundational document that shapes the entire trial. Second, under Clause 193(3) BNSS, victims have the right to be informed about the progress of the investigation. Third, Clause 230 BNSS gives victims access to the police report, FIR, and witness statements – information that enables meaningful participation rather than uninformed presence. The Zero FIR provision, now codified under Clause 173 BNSS, also means a victim can file an FIR at any police station regardless of jurisdiction, removing a historically common procedural barrier to initiating legal action.

The limits of these rights 🔗

However, as critics have noted, the information rights under Clauses 193(3) and 230 are available only to victims who are represented by an advocate. This condition effectively excludes socio-economically disadvantaged victims who cannot afford legal representation – the very population that is most vulnerable and most in need of these protections. The right exists on paper, but its realisation depends on a legal aid infrastructure that remains inadequate across much of India.

Proposals for a victim support fund and legal representation 🔗

The Malimath Committee, whose recommendations laid the groundwork for many of the reforms described above, went further than what has been implemented so far. It recommended that victims have a right to be represented by an advocate of their choice, with the state bearing the cost when the victim cannot afford one. The Committee argued that the state’s resource constraints ought not to be an excuse for failing to create a robust victim assistance fund. This recommendation has not been fully translated into law. Free legal aid for victims under NALSA (National Authority for Legal Services) exists in theory, but the quality and accessibility of this aid – particularly for victims in rural areas or lower courts – remains patchy.

What reformers and scholars increasingly argue for is a dedicated victim support fund that goes beyond compensation to provide holistic assistance: legal aid, psychological counselling, rehabilitation support, and witness protection. The Central Victim Compensation Fund is a step in this direction, but it is limited to specific categories of crimes. A broader, universally applicable fund – administered by a central authority with uniform standards – would be required to meaningfully close the gap.

What a victim-oriented system actually requires 🔗

The shift toward victim orientation is not simply about adding new legal provisions. It requires rethinking how every institution in the criminal justice chain – police, prosecutors, courts, and legal aid bodies – treats the victim. Changes in law without institutional reconfiguration will deliver very few of the reforms intended. Effective implementation requires trained personnel who understand trauma-sensitive interviewing, courts that schedule hearings with victim convenience in mind, and public prosecutors who are accountable not just to the state but to the individuals harmed by crime.

The BNSS and BNS represent a meaningful legislative step forward. The mandatory audio-video recording of victims’ statements in sexual offence cases, the requirement for forensic experts to visit crime scenes for serious offences, and the provision of free first aid and medical treatment to victims of crimes against women and children – these are not cosmetic changes. But they coexist with a system still carrying the weight of backlogs, inadequate infrastructure, and a culture that has historically treated the victim as an afterthought.

Balancing victim rights with accused rights 🔗

A victim-oriented approach does not mean abandoning the rights of the accused. India’s criminal justice system is rightly built on the presumption of innocence, and expanding victim rights must not come at the cost of fair trial guarantees. The Malimath Committee was criticised precisely for recommendations that appeared to weaken presumption of innocence in the name of victim justice. The goal is not a zero-sum trade-off but a rebalancing: ensuring that the system’s focus on the accused’s rights does not systematically crowd out recognition of the victim’s rights. Both can coexist – fair investigation and fair trial are constitutional entitlements, as the Supreme Court affirmed in Rattiram & Ors v. State of M.P., for victim and accused alike.

What do you think? If victim compensation in India still varies so drastically from state to state, can it really be called a right rather than a discretionary benefit? And given that many of the BNSS’s victim-participation rights apply only to victims represented by a lawyer, how meaningful is this reform for those who cannot afford one?

References

1. https://ijlmh.com/paper/victim-rights-in-india-is-the-focus-of-the-criminal-justice-system-shifting-from-the-accused-to-the-victim/
2. https://www.ielrc.org/content/a0402.pdf
3. https://p39ablog.com/2023/11/criminal-law-bills-2023-decoded-13-victims-rights/
4. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6a02687b-b95a-498f-91ce-a0053747e0c7
5. https://www.vintagelegalvl.com/post/study-on-victim-compensation-scheme-under-section-357a-of-the-crpc
6. https://juriscentre.com/2025/04/14/victim-compensation/
7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291125001640
8. https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=2082757
9. https://idronline.org/article/rights/how-indias-new-criminal-laws-curb-civil-liberties/
10. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1812410