Introduction
Criminal justice systems across the world have grappled with a persistent reality: conviction of the offender, while essential for public accountability and deterrence, does not by itself repair the harm suffered by the victim. For child victims of sexual offences, the harm encompasses physical injury, psychological trauma, disruption of education and development, social stigma, and in many cases economic deprivation when the offender was also a family provider. The recognition that criminal prosecution must be accompanied by victim-centred remedial measures has led to the development of victim compensation frameworks that seek to address, at least partially, these dimensions of harm.
India’s POCSO Act includes Section 33(8), which empowers Special Courts to award compensation to child victims. Simultaneously, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) has established a Victim Compensation Scheme for Women Victims and Survivors of Sexual Assault and Other Crimes, 2018, which specifies amounts payable to POCSO victims. State victim compensation funds established under the Code of Criminal Procedure (now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023) provide the financial mechanism. The legislative and institutional architecture for compensation is therefore relatively comprehensive. The implementation reality is strikingly different: research consistently finds that the vast majority of POCSO victims entitled to compensation do not receive it, and that the procedural barriers to compensation are numerous, poorly understood, and often insurmountable without active legal assistance.
Legal Framework
Section 33(8) of the POCSO Act provides that the Special Court may, in addition to the punishment awarded to the offender, make an order awarding compensation to the child victim for any physical or mental trauma suffered or for immediate rehabilitation of the child. The provision is discretionary (“may” rather than “shall”) and does not specify the amounts, criteria, or procedures for assessment, leaving these to judicial discretion and the applicable compensation scheme.
The NALSA Victim Compensation Scheme 2018 provides structure to this discretion. For POCSO offences, the scheme specifies compensation amounts based on the type and severity of the offence: penetrative sexual assault attracts compensation of between three lakhs and ten lakhs rupees (higher for gang rape); non-penetrative assault carries between fifty thousand and three lakhs; and cases involving minors below twelve years at the time of the offence attract additional amounts reflecting the heightened vulnerability. These amounts represent the scheme’s upper bounds; actual awards may be lower based on assessment of specific circumstances.
The State Legal Services Authorities (SLSAs) administer compensation funds established under CrPC Section 357A (now BNSS Section 396), which requires every state government to prepare a scheme for providing funds for compensation to the victims or their dependants. The SLSA is responsible for determining the compensation payable on recommendation from the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) or the Special Court.
Section 33(8) specifically provides for interim compensation, which is payable before the conclusion of the trial, recognising that victims need financial support during the often lengthy period of criminal proceedings. The interim compensation provision is particularly important because it addresses immediate needs: medical treatment, counselling, temporary accommodation, and livelihood support for a child who may be unable to return to her home or who has suffered interruption of education as a result of the abuse and its consequences.
The POCSO Rules, 2020 address compensation more specifically than the 2012 Rules. Rule 7(6) provides that the support person assigned to the child victim shall inform the child and her family of the right to compensation and shall assist in making an application to the Special Court or the DLSA. This reflects an understanding that the compensation right is practically inaccessible without active guidance.
Judicial Developments
The Supreme Court in Nipun Saxena v. Union of India (2018) directed NALSA to prepare a model compensation scheme for victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and related offences. The Court’s directions were instrumental in the development of the NALSA Victim Compensation Scheme 2018 and directed that the Special Court shall mandatorily consider awarding compensation at the time of sentencing in every case involving a child victim. The Court also directed that interim compensation be considered at the time of filing the chargesheet, without waiting for conviction.
The Delhi High Court in several POCSO compensation matters has issued directions that the DLSA shall assign legal aid counsel to every child victim specifically for the purpose of compensation application, and that the Special Court shall, on its own motion, consider compensation at every stage of the proceedings including at the time of bail hearing, chargesheet filing, and conclusion of trial. These directions reflect the Court’s understanding that the passive “may award” framework in Section 33(8) requires active judicial facilitation to be effective.
High Courts in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Kerala have similarly directed District Legal Services Authorities to designate POCSO compensation monitoring officers who track pending POCSO cases and ensure that compensation applications are filed and pursued. These administrative directions represent creative judicial management of a systemic implementation failure.
The Supreme Court in Mukesh v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2017, the Nirbhaya gang rape case) extensively discussed the right of victims to compensation and restitution as a constitutional entitlement under Article 21, observing that the state’s failure to provide adequate victim compensation is itself a violation of the victim’s fundamental rights. While that case involved an adult victim, the constitutional principle enunciated applies with equal force to child victims under POCSO.
In 2023, the Supreme Court, while hearing a case on POCSO implementation, expressed concern about data from NCPCR showing extremely low rates of compensation disbursement to POCSO victims and directed the Union government and State Legal Services Authorities to submit district-wise data on compensation applications received, decided, and disbursed. The exercise revealed significant gaps in both application rates and disbursement rates, prompting further directions for systemic improvement.
Contemporary Issues and Analysis
Research by the HAQ Centre for Child Rights, conducted across multiple states and published in reports between 2019 and 2023, has consistently found that fewer than ten percent of POCSO victims who are entitled to compensation under applicable schemes actually receive it. The reasons for this shocking underutilisation are multiple and mutually reinforcing.
First, awareness of the compensation right is extremely low among victims and their families. Families navigating the criminal justice system are overwhelmed with the demands of police investigation, court appearances, and managing the social consequences of disclosure; in this context, the proactive pursuit of a compensation application requires knowledge, resources, and legal assistance that most families simply do not have. The mandatory information-giving role of the support person under POCSO Rule 7(6) is not being performed effectively in practice because support persons are often absent or inadequately trained.
Second, the procedural requirements for compensation applications create significant barriers. The process requires filing a written application, supporting it with documentary evidence of injury and financial need, and appearing before the DLSA for consideration. This is a multi-step administrative process that is challenging even for educated adults; for families of rural or semi-urban child victims, often managing trauma, social stigma, and economic disruption simultaneously, it may be practically impossible without active legal aid assistance.
Third, even where applications are filed, the DLSA determination process is slow, inconsistent, and poorly documented. Determinations may take months; communication of decisions to applicants is unreliable; and the disbursement of funds, once awarded, involves banking procedures that may be inaccessible to families without bank accounts in the child’s name.
Fourth, the intersection of compensation with the trial timeline creates a specific problem. Compensation under Section 33(8) is technically available as interim or final relief; in practice, most courts consider compensation only at the time of sentencing, which occurs only after conviction. Given that conviction rates in POCSO cases, while higher than general criminal trial rates, are not universal, many victims wait years for trial conclusion only to find that the accused is acquitted and no compensation is awarded. The compensation scheme should be entirely independent of conviction, because a child’s need for support does not depend on the outcome of the criminal trial.
The One-Stop Centres (Sakhi Centres) established by the Ministry of Women and Child Development across districts should, in principle, serve as access points for compensation assistance. In practice, Sakhi Centres focus primarily on crisis intervention in cases of violence against women and are not consistently integrated with the POCSO compensation process or with the DLSA’s victim compensation machinery.
Comparative and International Perspective
The United Kingdom’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) is an independent statutory body established by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act 1995, which administers a state-funded scheme for compensating victims of violent crimes including child sexual abuse. The CICA scheme is not dependent on criminal conviction; victims may apply for compensation as soon as they have reported the crime, and the CICA makes its own assessment of the facts. The scheme is tariff-based, meaning standardised amounts are fixed for each category of injury, making the process predictable and reducing the discretion-related disparities that characterise India’s case-by-case judicial approach. Child sexual abuse victims in the UK may claim between £1,000 and £44,000 under the tariff, with additional amounts for loss of earnings and special expenses.
The US Crime Victims’ Rights Act (18 USC Section 3771) mandates that every federal court order restitution to victims of crimes including child sexual abuse as part of the sentence. Restitution is mandatory rather than discretionary and covers a comprehensive range of losses including medical expenses, therapy, lost income, and future earning capacity. Individual states have similar mandatory restitution provisions. The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) under the Department of Justice also administers a federal Victims of Crime Act fund that distributes grants to states for victim compensation and assistance programmes.
Australia operates state-based victim compensation schemes that provide no-fault compensation (independent of criminal proceedings) to victims of violent offences including child sexual abuse. The Victorian Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal (VOCAT), for example, can award primary victims up to AU$60,000 in recognition of the injuries suffered, with additional awards for expenses. The New South Wales Victims Support Scheme provides lump-sum payments of up to AU$50,000 for victims of child sexual assault, payable on application without requirement of a criminal conviction.
These comparative frameworks share a critical design principle that India’s current system lacks: the independence of victim compensation from criminal conviction. A child who has been abused but whose abuser is acquitted, or who decides not to pursue criminal prosecution for any reason, retains the right to state compensation because the harm to the child exists regardless of the outcome of the criminal process.
Practical and Policy Implications
The systemic underutilisation of POCSO victim compensation reflects a fundamental design failure: a compensation system that requires the victim to actively apply, to navigate complex administrative processes, and to await the conclusion of criminal proceedings is not designed for accessibility. It is designed for failure.
The practical implications extend beyond individual injustice. When child victims do not receive compensation, the message that the criminal justice system sends is that the victim’s suffering, acknowledged in the conviction of the offender, does not merit the state’s financial response. This undermines confidence in the system and reduces the incentive for future victims and their families to report abuse and cooperate with prosecution.
Public prosecutors in POCSO Special Courts should bear responsibility for raising the compensation question before the court, both at the interim stage and at conviction, as part of their representation of the state’s interest in child welfare. The current position, in which compensation is viewed as a separate civil matter rather than an integral part of the criminal proceeding, must change.
Suggestions and Reforms
The POCSO Act should be amended to replace the discretionary “may award” in Section 33(8) with a mandatory “shall award” provision, making compensation an automatic entitlement at conviction. The Special Court should be required to address compensation at every significant procedural stage, including chargesheet filing (for interim compensation), bail hearing (for interim compensation), and sentencing (for final compensation).
India should move toward a CICA-style independent victim compensation body for POCSO cases, funded by the central government, which processes compensation claims independently of criminal proceedings. This would decouple victim support from the outcome of the criminal case and allow compensation to begin flowing to victims within months of the disclosure, rather than after a trial that may take years.
NALSA should develop a simplified, single-page compensation application form in regional languages for POCSO cases, and should pilot a process in which Sakhi Centre staff are trained and empowered to file compensation applications on behalf of victims without the need for a formal legal aid lawyer.
A mandatory compensation disbursement tracking system, accessible to NCPCR, NALSA, and High Court registries, should be developed so that the current invisibility of compensation underutilisation is replaced with real-time data that can drive accountability.
Conclusion
The gap between the POCSO Act’s compensation framework and its implementation reality represents one of the most concrete failures of India’s child protection system. Child victims who have suffered abuse, cooperated with investigations and prosecutions, and endured years of court proceedings are entitled, under clear statutory and constitutional authority, to financial support that acknowledges their suffering and assists their rehabilitation. The systematic failure to deliver this entitlement is not a marginal problem; it is a central feature of the system as it currently operates.
Remedying this failure requires both legislative reform to make compensation mandatory rather than discretionary, and institutional reform to create accessible, victim-centred processes that work for families who are not equipped to navigate complex administrative systems without guidance. The standard is clear: every child who has suffered a POCSO offence should receive compensation, and no procedural barrier should stand between the child and that support.
