Supreme Court Warns Doctors Against Conducting Two-Finger Test On Rape Victims
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-11-01 12:42:02
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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The Supreme Court rightly took exception to the fact that despite the ban on the two-finger test for rape victims, it still existed in textbooks and many doctors carried out the humiliating test in complete disregard of Supreme Court strictures. It ordered that all reference to the said test be erased from medical curriculum and warned doctors that if they are found guilty of conducting the test, they would be hauled up for misconduct.
In the instant case, the apex court reversed the order of the Jharkhand HC which acquitted a man charged of rape-murder of a 16-year-old girl just because the medical board had conducted the two-finger test and found her to be sexually active. The apex court rubbished the said test as it said that it "has no scientific basis and neither proves not disproves allegations of rape". (The Supreme Court had banned the said test for rape victims in 2013 by saying that it "violates the right of privacy, physical and mental integrity and dignity").
The court further said that "the two-finger test is based on the incorrect assumption that a sexually active woman cannot be raped. Nothing could be further from the truth - a woman's sexual history is wholly immaterial while adjudicating whether the accused raped her". The court added that "it is patriarchal and sexist to suggest that a woman cannot be believed when she states that she was raped, merely because she is sexually active", and the "probative value of a woman's testimony does not depend upon her sexual history".
What the Supreme Court has so succinctly said does not need a high IQ to understand. The crime of rape is based on consent. It has nothing to do with whether the woman has had sex before, or has sex with more than one partner, or whether she is married or not or what she is wearing, how she behaves and what time of the day or night she is out of her house, either with someone or alone. If a man proposes to have sex with a woman and if she says no, then if the man has sex with her against her wishes he commits the crime of raping her. It's that simple.
But the patriarchal and sexist society indulges in victim blaming and victim shaming and finds a thousand excuses to intrude upon a rape victims' privacy, subjects her to unnecessary trauma, causes her physical and mental pain and strips her of her dignity, despite strict Supreme Court guidelines for the procedure to be followed in rape cases. Hence, just banning the two-finger test and threats of hauling up doctors for misconduct will not do. There must be a law with strict and defined punishment for those who carry out acts that are prohibited by the Supreme Court.
