NEW DELHI: Deprecating continued use of the banned invasive two-finger test to determine a rape survivor’s prior sexual conduct, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Union and state governments to take steps to erase the humiliating test from medical curriculum and warned that doctors would be guilty of misconduct for carrying it out.
“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,” said a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli. The SC in 2013 had declared that the “two-finger test violates the right of rape survivors to privacy, physical and mental integrity and dignity”.
The bench said, “Probative value of a woman’s testimony does not depend upon her sexual history. 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.”
