The Multifaceted Nature of Victimisation in Contemporary Society

Victimisation is not a single, isolated event. It is a process – one that can begin the moment a crime is committed and continue long after the offender has been dealt with by the law. In the Indian context, where caste hierarchies, gender inequalities, economic disparities, and institutional shortcomings intersect, the experience of victimisation is often layered, prolonged, and deeply unequal. Understanding its different forms is not just an academic exercise – it is the foundation of any meaningful victim-centred approach to criminal justice.

What do we mean by victimisation? 🔗

At its core, victimisation refers to the process by which a person suffers harm – physical, psychological, financial, or social – as a result of a criminal act or harmful conduct. Victimology, as a discipline, examines this process scientifically, looking beyond the offence itself to understand the full impact on those affected and the broader societal response. Crucially, the UN Declaration on Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power affirms that crime constitutes not merely a violation of a penal code, but also causes harm – including economic loss, emotional suffering, and physical or mental injury – to the persons it touches.

Victimisation is best understood not as a single incident but as a layered process with at least three distinct phases – primary, secondary, and tertiary – each carrying its own consequences for the victim.

Primary victimisation: the direct harm of the criminal act 🔗

Primary victimisation refers to the immediate and direct harm caused by the criminal act itself – the physical injury suffered in an assault, the financial loss from fraud, or the psychological trauma following a sexual offence. This is what most people picture when they think of a “crime victim.” It is personal, first-hand, and immediate.

Primary victimisation studies focus on victimisation risks linked to lifestyle choices, social environment, and proximity to potential offenders. Factors such as where a person lives, who they associate with, and their social and economic status all influence who is most at risk. In India, for instance, Scheduled Caste communities, women, religious minorities, and economically marginalised groups face disproportionately elevated primary victimisation risks, owing to their structural vulnerabilities within society.

Vulnerability and differential risk 🔗

Not everyone faces equal exposure to crime. Repeat victimisation – where the same individual or household is targeted more than once – is strongly correlated with lower socioeconomic status and residential proximity to concentrations of potential offenders. Being victimised a second time amplifies psychological trauma considerably. This is particularly evident in property crimes, where poorly protected residences in economically disadvantaged areas face recurring targeting. The costs, in both material and human terms, fall hardest on those who already have the least.

Secondary victimisation: when the system causes further harm 🔗

Secondary victimisation – also called post-crime victimisation or “double victimisation” – is the harm that arises not from the criminal act itself but from the response of institutions and individuals to the victim. It occurs when police officers are dismissive, when courts subject victims to hostile cross-examination, when family members express shame rather than support, or when media coverage sensationalises trauma. In many cases, secondary victimisation proves as damaging as the original offence – sometimes more so, because it carries the added sting of betrayal by those who should offer help.

In India’s criminal justice system, secondary victimisation is a well-documented concern. Victims are routinely subjected to repeated appearances in court in a hostile or semi-hostile environment, often with far fewer procedural rights than the accused. The Justice Malimath Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System (2003) highlighted precisely this gap, recommending that victims be given the right to participate in proceedings, be represented by an advocate, and receive compensation – recognising that the current adversarial model frequently sidelines victims entirely.

Secondary victimisation in sexual offence cases 🔗

The experience of rape survivors illustrates secondary victimisation with particular starkness. Victims face intense social stigma that discourages reporting, and those who do report frequently find themselves questioned about their character, clothing, or prior conduct during trial – a process that has been described as re-traumatising. The Madras High Court in M. Kavya emphasised that the least institutions can be expected to do is not victimise survivors further, even in the absence of comprehensive support services. Yet the gap between this expectation and everyday reality remains substantial.

Media conduct is another driver of secondary victimisation. When news outlets broadcast a victim’s grief, reveal personal details, or frame reporting in ways that sensationalise trauma, they extend harm beyond the original act of violence, inflicting additional suffering on individuals who have already been through enormous distress.

Tertiary victimisation: the long shadow of stigma 🔗

Tertiary victimisation goes beyond the experiences of primary and secondary harm and refers to the long-term consequences of being labelled or stigmatised as a victim. This includes social exclusion, difficulty in employment or personal relationships, structural disadvantages in areas such as insurance or housing, and the internalization of a “victim identity” that can undermine a person’s sense of agency and self-worth. A rape survivor who is excluded from her community, a trafficking victim who cannot reintegrate into society, or a fraud victim whose creditworthiness is permanently damaged – all are experiencing tertiary victimisation.

It is important to note that secondary and tertiary victims are not necessarily less traumatised than primary victims. The children of a rape survivor, relatives of a murder victim, or a community shaken by organised violence – all carry the weight of victimisation, even if the law has not always recognised their standing as victims.

Victimisation of marginalised groups 🔗

In India, the nature of victimisation is inseparable from social structures of caste, gender, religion, and economic class. Research on Scheduled Tribe communities highlights the deep-rooted vulnerabilities these groups face – physical harm, psychological distress, economic loss, and social exclusion – all compounded by discrimination within the justice system itself, fear of reprisals, and limited awareness of legal rights. Access to justice remains structurally unequal.

Caste-based violence against Dalit communities represents one of the starkest forms of group victimisation in India. Targeted violence directed at individuals on the basis of caste identity is, as scholars have noted, directed not simply toward the individual victim but toward the collective wider community to which the victim is perceived to belong. The same logic applies to communal violence targeting religious minorities. Gender and economic marginalisation compound these vulnerabilities further, making it difficult for victims to access justice and exposing them to specific forms of harm that others would not face.

Economic exploitation and financial victimisation 🔗

Economic victimisation takes many forms – from traditional fraud and property crime to sophisticated digital exploitation. With India’s rapid digitisation, financial fraud has emerged as a major and growing category. The NCRB’s Crime in India 2023 report recorded a 31.2% rise in cybercrime offences, reaching 86,128 cases, with financial fraud, sexual exploitation, and identity theft among the leading categories. Yet these figures almost certainly undercount the true scale – in 2023, the National Payments Corporation of India found that UPI-linked fraud rose by 71%, while many victims did not report because they lacked confidence in navigating the formal complaint process.

The victims of financial crime are not evenly distributed across society. The typical victims of phishing scams and job fraud are not the urban middle class but low-income workers, migrant families, and elderly populations – those with the least digital literacy and the fewest resources to seek redress. This points to a fundamental feature of economic victimisation: it exploits pre-existing vulnerabilities, ensuring that harm is concentrated where it is already most acute.

Victimisation by organised crime and human trafficking 🔗

Organised crime creates a distinct category of victimisation characterised by power asymmetries, fear, and the deliberate targeting of the most vulnerable. Human trafficking is perhaps the clearest example. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, as many as one child disappears every eight minutes in India, with trafficking occurring for purposes of labour, begging, and sexual exploitation. Children are frequently deceived – promised legitimate employment and then enslaved upon arrival. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and India’s adoption of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons represent legislative responses to this crisis, though enforcement remains deeply uneven.

Victims of organised crime face compounded victimisation. Physical and psychological harm from the criminal act itself is layered with coercive control – victims are often threatened into silence, preventing them from accessing justice. If and when they do reach the criminal justice system, secondary victimisation frequently follows: scepticism from officials, stigmatisation from communities, and a justice process ill-equipped to address trauma.

Environmental victimisation: the overlooked dimension 🔗

Environmental victimisation refers to the harm suffered by individuals and communities as a result of environmental crimes – pollution, illegal dumping of hazardous waste, deforestation, and corporate violations of environmental regulations. This form of victimisation is often invisible: victims of environmental crime frequently do not know they are being harmed, or they accept the harm because their economic survival depends on the very activity causing it. E-waste workers in India’s large informal recycling sector, for example, face serious health consequences from toxic exposure – consequences that rarely register in official crime statistics or victim support frameworks.

Environmental victimisation is also diffuse and long-term, making it difficult for victims to establish causation or seek legal redress. Indian law has focused more on compensation than on imprisonment for environmental offenders, and even compensation mechanisms are inadequate for the scale of harm caused. Green criminology has increasingly pushed for environmental victims to receive the same recognition and support as victims of conventional crime – a push that is gaining traction but remains far from realised in India’s legal framework.

Towards a more complete understanding of victimisation 🔗

The picture that emerges is one of considerable complexity. Victimisation is not confined to the moment a crime occurs – it extends through institutional responses, community reactions, social stigma, and structural disadvantages that can persist for years. In India, these processes are shaped by deep inequalities of caste, class, gender, and geography, meaning that the same criminal act produces very different experiences depending on who the victim is. The Indian Society of Victimology, established in 1992, has long advocated for victim-centred reforms – and while legislative progress has been made through provisions like Section 357-A of the CrPC (now carried forward in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita) on victim compensation, the gap between law on paper and justice in practice remains wide. Recognising the full spectrum of victimisation – from the initial harm of a crime to the long shadows of tertiary stigmatisation – is the first step toward closing that gap.

What do you think? If secondary victimisation by the criminal justice system can sometimes be as damaging as the original crime, what structural changes should India prioritise to prevent it? And given that marginalised communities bear a disproportionate share of victimisation across all its forms, how should vulnerability be factored into victim support policies and compensation frameworks?

References

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