In a serious transgression of legal procedures, an audio clip of a 10-year-old child rape survivor recording her statement to the Chennai police has been circulating on social media platforms since Sunday, September 8. The leak of the 10-minute audio clip recorded by the investigating officer (IO) is a serious violation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and has left child rights activists questioning the police's handling of the case.
In addition to the tape leak, the police also showed extraordinary haste and took the hospitalised child’s statement at 10.30 pm, showing absolute disregard for the child’s welfare.
The First Information Report (FIR) with the name of the child has also been released in the public domain.
The 10-year-old was taken to a hospital after she fell sick on August 29, where the doctors had informed one of the parents that the child had been raped. The survivor had first named her neighbour Satish, a 30-year-old water can supplier, as the accused. The survivor’s mother filed a complaint against Satish with the Anna Nagar All Women’s Police Station (AWPS), who lodged an FIR on August 30. Satish was booked under Sections 5(i), 5(m), and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
However, according to the police, the survivor later changed her statement and named a minor boy, who is related to her, as having sexually assaulted her two years ago. This statement has been circulating on social media platforms. But the mother of the survivor told TNM that the survivor had been threatened by the woman inspector of Anna Nagar AWPS Rajeev to change her statement.
In the audio clip, the child first expresses how terrified she is of the police hitting her. After assurances from the woman officer in conversation with her, she continues to record her statement. In the audio clip, she says that Satish (whom she had earlier accused of raping her) was not responsible for the sexual assault and names a minor boy as having abused her two years ago. The woman officer is heard telling the child that it is “late,” that they are at a hospital, and that it is well beyond her (the child survivor) bedtime.
Grievous disregard of guidelines
Devaneyan, a child activist, pointed out, “Firstly, if the police are recording a statement of a child survivor, they should have taken a video statement. That is what they are mandated to do. But, if the need arises and they do end up recording an audio statement, at no cost can such sensitive clips be released. The audio was clearly with the police, and someone from there seems to have casually released it. This is condemnable. Secondly, they aren’t even supposed to name a child under the age of 18, even if they are the perpetrators of a crime, in the FIR. They also cannot release the FIR to the public, but both of these guidelines have also been violated.”
Section 24(5) of the POCSO Act, which outlines how statements have to be recorded, clearly states that the police should ensure that the identity of the child is protected “from the public, media, unless otherwise directed by the Special Court in the interest of the child.” Under 24(1), it also mandates that the police record statements either at the residence of the child or at a place of the child’s choice. However, it is unclear if the police took the child’s consent to record the statement at the hospital on August 30.
Vidya Reddy, from Tulir, the Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse in Chennai, also noted that from the leaked audio, it is clear that the police have not done a forensic interview of the child survivor. “The audio is a classic example of bad practices while interviewing a child victim. Many believe that it is easy to interview a child victim because they either have children themselves or have interacted with children closely. They don’t understand how important it is to gather information rightly from a child victim. The interviewing of a child victim has to be trauma-informed, and they have to follow the basic principles of forensic interviewing.”
It may be noted that forensic interviews, a key component of many child protective services’ investigations, are conducted in a manner that will yield factual information from a child survivor to be used in legal settings such as a court hearing. It also aims to remove or minimise the usage of suggestive or leading questions by the interviewer that may call the child survivor’s statements into question.
Although the audio clips have been making rounds since September 8, Vijaykumar, Joint Commissioner of Police (JCP) for West Chennai, told TNM that the clip was circulated only on Tuesday, September 10. He said, “This is a serious violation, and there will be an internal inquiry to identify who leaked the audio.”
This case has also been shrouded in controversy since the parents of the survivor alleged that the police had assaulted them when they went to file a complaint. The mother of the survivor also told TNM that the police had threatened her daughter to retract the name of the accused, Satish.
It may be noted that the child survivor was first taken to a hospital on August 29 after the girl fell sick. At the hospital, the doctors who examined the girl told the mother that she had been raped. The doctors referred the survivor to Kilpauk Medical College (KMC) Hospital in Chennai. The survivor was taken to KMC on August 30.
Daughter told me about Satish, says mother
The mother told TNM, “My daughter had not told me about the rape. She revealed Satish’s name only after the doctors informed me and I asked her about it. She then told me that Satish raped her every day for five days and threatened to kill her if she revealed it to anyone. Later, he tried to rape my daughter again for two consecutive days, but my daughter said she ran away.” According to the mother, the girl was sexually assaulted for five days from August 19.
After the survivor was taken to KMC on August 30, the Anna Nagar AWPS was informed. The mother said that when the police recorded their statements on that day, her daughter had named Satish as the accused.
“Later, the police asked me to come to the station and give the complaint in writing. I tried to reason with them since I did not want to leave my daughter at the hospital. Her father was not allowed inside the ward, so he could not stay with her. Despite this, they insisted that I go to the station at 7 pm and file a complaint,” the mother said.
It may be noted that a woman in India cannot be forced to go to a police station to file a complaint between 6 pm and 6 am.
Allegations of police brutality
The girl’s mother said that she reached the police station, where she waited until midnight when the inspector, Rajeev, arrived. Upon arriving, the inspector reportedly twisted her hands, beat her up, and demanded that she give her answers. “I told them I only knew whatever was told to me at the hospital by the doctors and my daughter,” the mother explained. The inspector had then called her arrogant and threatened to file a case against her and put her behind bars for three years for not “raising her daughter properly.”
The police, however, denied the allegations of police brutality. Vijaykumar told TNM, “There was no CCTV inside the inspector’s room, but we checked the other CCTV footage and also inquired about it. We found no evidence of the police having beaten up the mother and the father of the minor survivor. We also checked if the inspector had spoken harshly to the family and verified that it wasn’t true. The inspector was just doing her job.”
‘Survivor threatened to not name Satish’
After the survivor’s mother returned to the hospital from the police station during the wee hours on August 31, the mother said that she saw the police “interrogating” her daughter. She told TNM, “My mother and other relatives who were present at the hospital said that they began interrogating my daughter around 10 pm. They made her sit near the lift, and my husband said they didn’t allow him to sit next to my daughter. After I reached there, the police took my phone away and asked me to sit far away from where they were conducting the interrogation,” she said.
The mother added that it was during this “interrogation” that her daughter was threatened and made to change her statement. She alleged that the police threatened the child that her parents would go to jail and her sibling would be placed in a care home if she named her neighbour as the accused. She added that the child retracted her earlier statement and named the juvenile boy after the threat by the police.
TNM contacted Rajeev, inspector of Anna Nagar AWPS, but the officer declined to comment.
“The protocol clearly states that questioning a child victim once is enough. If the police already talked to her once, why did they have to do so again?” Devaneyan asked. “Secondly, while questioning a survivor, either one of the parents should be present. If the parents are suspected to have been involved in the said crime, a guardian should have been present. If not, a social worker like a Child Welfare Officer or a helpline officer should be present. Based on the mother’s accusations, the police have violated two major protocols,” he said.
But, according to a press statement released by the Chennai police, dated September 7, the survivor’s mother was questioned twice, and her statement was collected twice, not that of the child survivor. The press release read, “The Inspector of Police, W7 AWPS, received information from Kilpauk Medical College Hospital at 5.15 pm, reached the hospital at 5.50 pm, recorded the statement of the mother of the victim, and FIR registered at 8.20 pm. The Investigation Officer again went to Kilpauk Medical College Hospital and recorded the statement of the victim, mother, father, and medical officer.”
In another statement, the police also said that the officer spoke to the child only once and that her father was present when she gave a statement.
The police maintained that the survivor, in her only statement, had retracted Satish’s name and had instead named her relative, a juvenile boy who had allegedly sexually assaulted her two years ago. Based on the survivor’s statement, the police concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest Satish and therefore produced the minor boy before the Juvenile Justice Court magistrate. However, there is no FIR filed against him, and he has also been released to his family.
TNM visited Satish’s house, located inside the same compound as the survivor’s house, on September 8. But neither Satish nor his family were available at home. Meanwhile, the family of the survivor has moved out of their house and shifted to a different locality for the safety of their daughter.