Nirbhaya fund: State governments not supporting Centre, SC told

The Nirbhaya Fund was announced by the Centre in 2013 after the sensational December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder case in Delhi to support the initiatives of the governments and the NGOs working towar

New Delhi, October 4:The state governments are not cooperating with the Centre on the issue relating to disbursal of compensation to the victims of sexual assault under the Nirbhaya fund, the Supreme Court was today told.

The Nirbhaya Fund was announced by the Centre in 2013 after the sensational December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder case in Delhi to support the initiatives of the governments and the NGOs working towards safety of women.

A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta was told by senior advocate Indira Jaising, an amicus curiae in the matter, that the Centre wanted a direction to the states in this regard.

"The concern expressed by the Centre is that they are finding it difficult to have cooperation from the states. They want a direction from the court," she told the bench.

Jaising also informed the apex court that she has gone through 36 schemes related to compensation to be disbursed to victims of sexual assault under the Nirbhaya fund and has extracted the best practices which could be looked into by the bench.

"You please file the documents so that we can also go through it," the bench told Jaising and posted the matter for hearing on October 12.

The top court had on September 22 said that it would like to hear submissions of the amicus and the Centre on how best to evolve an integrated and cohesive system of payment of compensation to victims of sexual assault and also about steps to rehabilitate these victims or at least reduce or eliminate the trauma they have undergone.

It had earlier observed that there was no clarity on how and at what stage compensation was to be paid to the victims of sexual assault.

The court had also noted the absence of an integrated system of disbursal and management of the money allocated for compensating the victims.

Jaising had earlier told the court that there was no uniformity in the disbursal of funds to the victims of sexual assault as in states like Goa, the amount was Rs 10 lakh while in some other states, it was only Rs one lakh.

Six petitions were filed in the Supreme Court after the gangrape case in Delhi on December 16, 2012 raising concerns over the safety and security of women.

All the petitions were tagged by the apex court and several directions have been issued from time to time in this regard.

The Victim Compensation Scheme under section 357(A) of CrPC has not been notified by all the states, Jaising had earlier told the Suprme Court.

PTI