DEHRADUN: A girl not more than 18 and dressed in a crisp white sari speaks haltingly, sometimes her voice just a whisper. “Yes, I am aware of the Kathua incident. Most of us are following it closely,” she says, gesturing towards the three girls sitting alongside, who like her are rape survivors. At the NGO in the heart of Dehradun, a one-of-its-kind-shelter that houses 50 women who have all been victims of rape, there is a raging debate among the girls and women. Should news reports take the Jammu girl's name and show her face if her parents agree to it? For that matter, should rape victims -- with the permission of guardians if they are minors -- some out in the open with their story? No names changed, no face blurred?Almost all of them were unanimous in their opinion. “Why should we be asked to hide our identity when we haven’t committed any crime? Shouldn’t those who are committing rapes be the ones covering their faces?”? the girl in the white sari says, her voice steady now, eyes displaying flashes of anger. “By remaining anonymous, we are only letting rapists gain strength.” Other heads nod in assent.?Whether or not to disclose the identity of a rape survivor has for long been a grey area in the judicial system. Section 228 A of the Indian Penal Code prohibits publicizing the name of the survivor and entails in case of a violation punishment upto two years which may or may not be accompanied with a fine. However, there are provisions under which the identity can be revealed – a) if the police official conducting the investigation authorizes it in good faith, b) if the survivor herself allows it in writing, or c) if the victim is dead or minor or of unsound mind, and her next of kin authorizes it in writing.Renu D Singh, a human rights lawyer who runs Samadhan, the NGO, says that the basic aim of Section 228 was to ensure that rape survivors -- once they get back to their daily lives -- do not have their past catching up with them.“But it tends to get misused a lot, often against those who are trying to help the survivor,” she says, reeling off details of a string of cases filed against her by people accused of rape. “A man in the city had been raping a girl for several months. Her parents got her married to the rapist as a form of compromise. He continued tormenting her. Eventually, the woman ran away and took shelter in our centre. The man in order to harass us filed RTIs and dug up instances where I had participated in panel discussions with our rape survivors post the Nirbhaya incident,” she says. “He then filed a petition accusing me of violating section 228 A by disclosing the identity of rape survivors in public forums."Even though the law clearly states the provisions under which the identity can be revealed, such petitions get admitted in court. "The irony," Singh says, "is that they are filed by rapists themselves."Family and societal pressure do exist to remain incognito, the women at the centre admit, but add that survivors can get justice faster if they come out and name and shame their perpetrator. One of the survivors who is studying to be a lawyer (most of the women at the centre are pursuing law in order to fight their cases themselves or help others like them) says she recalls a particular case in her village quite vividly. “The rapist was convicted of the crime. He soon came out on bail and began accosting the girl who had accused him. Sometime later, she died in a road accident which many believed was engineered by the man. The case was never reported, nobody connected the dots since the girl and her family were reluctant to reveal her identity.”There is another vital point to the debate, adds Singh. “Just because a girl is a rape survivor, her right to expression under Article 19 of the Constitution cannot be snatched away Remember, she is the victim of a crime, not a criminal. When a rapist can shout in front of cameras that ‘I am innocent,’ why can’t the girl come forth and present her own story?”

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