In the light of all the legal lacunae which revealed itself during the research and writing of one’s first book, it was submitted to Government of India, and accepted, that there be a vegetative clause and another on repeat offenders in the strengthened anti-rape law. Therefore, if the child has been put in a vegetative state because of the sexual assault or been raped by a repeat offender, the child’s family can ask, if it wants to, for the death sentence by adding the relevant clauses from the strengthened anti-rape or CLA Act.

For justice to be truly done, any law needs to be fully effective. Its full weight needs to be felt within the shortest possible time-frame. For this, a law need to be a living one, constantly alive.

And yet, even when and if the CPUs and CPCs (POCSO mandates their setting up as Special Courts) happens, for our children prevention must at all times remain the best form of cure.

• Delhi

July 2013

Acknowledgement

When your publisher tells you it is India and her subcontinent’s first book on the subject, what can you leave out? More important, how much can you compress? When is basic information too basic and additional information an overload, even if it is a ‘first-time’? This is where commissioning editor Raj Kamini Mahadevan comes in; an important fort of an Author’s battle is conquered through the bloodless blue pencil of skilled editing, thanks amma Mahadevan. And thank you Big D—David Davidar, Chief Executive Officer, Penguin Books—for funding this research and investigation.

Research was initially facilitated by Child Relief and You and R. Lakshmi in their documentation department who inundated me with tons of reference material in those few weeks. I decided against doing a booklet after that point; but columnist Ashok Banker and the husband-wife journalist-team Nikhil Wagle and Meena Karnik insisted I follow through with detailed investigation to write a book as simply as possible on such a subject. Journalist Sheela Raval provided her perspective; Veena Lakhumalani at the British Council in Calcutta and the Mumbaii British Council and Library assisted in enormous measure; that repository of ‘stree shakti’ in the form of books at what is perhaps India’s only by-women-for-women library, Vacha, continuously challenged and provoked my thought processes. Those special officers in the Mumbaii Police unofficially networked with their counterparts in the emerging metros of India to get this book—apart from cases histories which churn the stomach and sicken the soul—a definitive idea of the statistical prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse in our country. And police officer Dr Kiran Bedi, who so spontaneously suggested that I speak to the women prisoners in Tihar jail when I met and told her about the connection between Child Sexual Abuse and women growing up to be convicts. I thought a lot about Dr Bedi’s offer when I returned home, I visualized how effectively I could do it and how this could turn out to be a pilot project in India. So tempting. Then I realized I would re-victimize the women by talking to them about their sexual abuse in childhood, after which I would simply walk out of the jail leaving them with awful memories—which they might be revealing for the first time in their lives—and with no friend or counselling facility to comfort them. But thank you Dr Bedi. And thank you all, truly.