“Language is considered critical to the life of law. Words are the vehicle through which the values of the law are communicated,” says the Supreme Court of India. Taking its cue from it, the Madras High Court has embarked on an exercise to sensitise the police, government doctors and trial courts to the need to avoid findings such as the victim in a sexual assault case being a virgin or not and the hymen being intact or not in the medical reports submitted before courts.
A Division Bench of Justices N. Anand Venkatesh and Sunder Mohan sought the assistance of A. Nagendra Kumar, Associate Professor, Institute of Forensic Medicine, to find out if it was absolutely necessary to give such medical findings on virginity in every other sexual assault case. The forensic expert, in turn, told the court that findings related to virginity were provided in medical reports only because of the insistence of investigating officers.
Further, stating that the expression, ‘hymen intact’, was being used widely in medical reports only to mean that no injuries had been sustained in the hymen, the doctor said it would be advisable to avoid such an expression and instead use other appropriate words. After recording his submission, the judges directed the police department to come up with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) with respect to medical examination of sexual assault victims.
