Victimology in India: Historical Roots and Modern Developments

When we talk about criminal justice, the conversation almost always centres on the offender – their intent, their trial, their punishment. But what about the person who actually suffered? In India, the story of how crime victims came to be recognised – not just as witnesses, but as stakeholders in justice – is a long and complex one. It stretches from ancient Vedic texts all the way to landmark Supreme Court rulings and modern legislative reforms. Understanding victimology in the Indian context means tracing that journey: from community-based restitution in ancient times, through the colonial erasure of victim rights, to the academic and legal awakening that began in the 1980s.

What victimology actually means 🔗

Victimology is the scientific study of crime victims – their experiences, the harm they suffer, and how legal and social systems respond to them. The term was formally coined by Benjamin Mendelsohn in 1947, who defined it as a branch of inquiry that places the victim, rather than the offender, at the centre of analysis. Unlike criminology, which examines why crimes happen and who commits them, victimology asks a different set of questions: Who suffers? How do they suffer? And does the system adequately respond?

In India, this field has a distinctly layered character. The country’s social realities – caste hierarchies, gender inequality, poverty, and a history of colonial legal structures – mean that victimization here is often tied to structural disadvantage. A person’s caste, gender, or economic status frequently determines not just their likelihood of being victimized, but also how the justice system treats them when they are.

Ancient roots: when the victim held power 🔗

Long before “victimology” existed as a term, ancient Indian society had built victim-oriented principles into its mechanisms of justice. During the Rigvedic era, a victim’s authority was so significant that they had substantial power in determining the fate of the offender. The primary principle underlying justice was compensation rather than punishment – offenders were required to pay damages to the victim alongside a fine to the king.

The Smritis – legal texts attributed to scholars like Manu, Yajnavalkya, Narada, and Brihaspati – all reflected this victim-compensation orientation. The Varna system, despite its many inequities, was embedded within this framework, where the nature of crime and punishment was determined in part by the victim’s social position. The underlying idea, however imperfectly applied, was that harm done to an individual required restoration – not merely retribution directed at the state.

In the pre-colonial tribal context, crime was treated as a transgression against the community, not just the individual. The tribe collectively responded to offences, and reparation – whether monetary or otherwise – was a mechanism to restore social equilibrium. The victim’s grievance was, in a meaningful sense, the community’s grievance.

The colonial shift: victims reduced to witnesses 🔗

The arrival of British colonial rule fundamentally altered this orientation. The British introduced an adversarial legal system modelled on English common law, where crime was reframed as an offence against the state rather than against the individual victim. Under this model, the state became the sole prosecutor, and the victim was relegated to the role of a witness – someone whose testimony was needed to secure a conviction, but whose interests, suffering, and rehabilitation were largely irrelevant to the proceedings.

This transformation had lasting consequences. Post-independence India inherited this colonial legal architecture largely intact. The Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973 continued to treat victims primarily as instruments of prosecution. A complainant had no independent right to participate in the trial, no right to appeal an acquittal, and minimal say in sentencing. As noted in academic literature on the Indian criminal justice system, victims suffered injustice silently, and even the basic act of registering a case often depended on the discretion of the investigating officer.

The 1980s turning point: academic awakening 🔗

Organised victimological research in India began in the late 1970s, with early studies focusing on narrow areas like dacoit gang violence, motor vehicle offences, and homicide. But the 1980s marked a genuine turning point. The first dedicated seminar on victimology in India was organised at the University of Madras in 1984, signalling the emergence of a distinct academic community interested in victim-centred research.

The institutionalisation of this interest came in August 1992, when the Indian Society of Victimology (ISV) was established at the University of Madras. Founded with the explicit objective of promoting victim rights and advocating for new legislation, the ISV began organising seminars, biennial conferences, and workshops across India. One of its most significant contributions was the organisation of a workshop to draft a Victim Assistance Bill – a proposal for dedicated legislation that, notably, has still not been enacted into law.

Academic institutions also began responding. The National Law School of India University in Bangalore, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, and several other institutions incorporated victimology into their curricula, treating it as a necessary lens within criminology and law studies.

Key areas of research: what Indian victimology examined 🔗

As academic interest in the 1980s and 1990s expanded, Indian victimologists moved beyond general crime surveys and began examining specific, socially rooted forms of victimization. Three areas received the most sustained attention.

Caste-based atrocities 🔗

India’s caste system creates a specific and well-documented pattern of victimization. Dalit communities – particularly Dalit women – face violence that is frequently rooted in the assertion of upper-caste dominance. Researchers documented how the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 existed on paper while implementation remained deeply inadequate. Barriers to justice – including police reluctance to register cases, social pressure on victims, and acquittal rates – made the gap between legal protection and lived reality stark. Victimological research gave this pattern both data and a framework for advocacy.

Gender-based violence 🔗

Research on women as victims of crime became a major strand of Indian victimology. Studies examined domestic violence, rape, dowry-related cruelty, and sexual harassment, documenting not just the incidence of these crimes but how victims experienced the legal system. Feminist victimology – which critiques “victim precipitation” as a form of victim-blaming and argues for treating survivors as empowered participants rather than passive sufferers – gained traction in Indian academic circles. The experiences of women within police stations and courtrooms, where secondary victimization was common, became a central concern. Key judicial milestones like the Vishakha judgment (1997) and the subsequent Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 were, in part, products of this sustained attention to gendered victimization.

Human rights violations by state and non-state actors 🔗

Indian victimology also turned its lens on victimization caused by state actors and non-state entities – custodial deaths, police brutality, displacement of tribal communities, and communal violence. This was a critical expansion of the field’s scope. By including victims of institutional violence and structural harm, victimology in India moved beyond individual criminal acts to examine how entire communities could be systematically victimized by the very systems meant to protect them.

Legal and judicial developments: building a framework 🔗

Academic interest eventually found reflection in legal reform. The 154th Law Commission Report of 1996 was a pivotal document – it was the first time victim-oriented provisions were formally recommended for integration into the Indian CrPC, articulating a vision of victims as active participants in justice rather than passive witnesses. The Malimath Committee Report of 2003 further recommended prevention of secondary victimization, the engagement of victim advocates, and state compensation schemes.

The 2009 amendment to the CrPC formally introduced a definition of “victim” into Indian criminal law and added Section 357A, which mandated every state to establish a Victim Compensation Scheme. This was a structural shift – it meant that victim compensation was no longer entirely at judicial discretion but had a statutory basis. Courts leveraged Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution to expand victim rights, with the Supreme Court recognising victims’ rights to legal representation, participation in sentencing, and appeal against acquittals.

In Mallikarjun Kodagali v. State of Karnataka (2019), the Supreme Court addressed the question of a victim’s right to appeal – recognising that a disproportionately lighter sentence frustrates not just the victim but the integrity of the criminal justice system itself. The more recent Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 has further attempted to embed victim-centric principles into the new criminal law framework, representing a paradigm shift from an offender-centric system to one increasingly recognising victims as central figures in justice delivery.

Persistent challenges 🔗

Despite this progress, significant gaps remain. India still lacks a single, dedicated statute consolidating the rights of victims – something that has been recommended by multiple committees and commissions for over three decades. Victim Compensation Schemes under Section 357A vary enormously in scope and generosity across states, and implementation is frequently delayed by bureaucratic processes and inadequate funds. Psychological and social support for victims remains limited, with most civil society organisations operating in a resource-constrained environment.

For victims from marginalised communities – Dalits, women, tribal communities – the barriers are compounded. Social stigma, fear of reprisals, and discrimination within the justice system itself mean that even existing legal protections do not translate into meaningful access to justice. The field of victimology in India continues to document this gap – between what the law promises and what victims actually experience.

The road ahead 🔗

The trajectory of victimology in India reflects a slow but discernible shift: from a system that treated the victim as incidental, to one that increasingly – if imperfectly – acknowledges their centrality to justice. The growing interest in restorative justice mechanisms – victim-offender dialogues, community conferencing, and mediation – represents a potential reconnection with India’s pre-colonial traditions of community-based conflict resolution, adapted to modern legal realities. Pilot programmes in juvenile justice contexts have already begun exploring these approaches.

Technology is also playing a role: videoconferencing for court testimony reduces re-traumatisation, and improved digital evidence collection is strengthening cases in crimes like domestic violence. A growing ecosystem of specialised civil society organisations provides crisis support, legal assistance, and rehabilitation that the state system often cannot. Together, these developments suggest that the field of victimology – academic, legal, and practical – will continue to shape how India understands and responds to crime.

What do you think? India’s criminal justice system has moved from treating victims purely as witnesses to gradually recognising them as stakeholders – but a dedicated victims’ rights law remains absent after decades of recommendations. Does the absence of such a law reflect a genuine policy gap, or is the piecemeal statutory and judicial approach sufficient? And given how caste and gender continue to determine whose victimization is taken seriously in practice, can procedural reforms alone bridge the gap between legal rights and real access to justice?

References

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