Accountability of Investigating Agencies vis-a-vis Victim’s Rights in the Criminal Justice System of India: Legal Challenges and Reforms

Abstract

Indian criminal procedure has gradually recognised the victim as a participant and not merely a witness, yet the agencies that control the first and most consequential stage of the process, investigation, remain answerable mainly to their own hierarchies and to courts that intervene intermittently. This paper examines how far the present legal framework makes investigating agencies answerable to victims, and where it does not. It uses a doctrinal and analytical method, drawing on the Constitution, the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 (CrPC), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 (BNSS), thirteen Supreme Court decisions selected purposively, official committee reports, reports of non-governmental organisations and published national crime statistics. Accountability is analysed through three dimensions drawn from Bovens and Schedler, namely answerability, enforceability and participation, across four stages: registration, investigation, closure and the interface with trial. The analysis finds that the BNSS strengthens information duties, notably the ninety-day progress communication in section 193(3)(ii), but that most victim-directed duties still lack an identified forum, a consequence for non-compliance, or a route the victim can invoke; that judicial safeguards have been articulated more fully for arrested and detained persons than for victims at the investigative stage; and that national aggregate statistics cannot show whether victims are informed or heard. The paper recommends consequence-bearing duties, a victim-accessible review route, structured compliance data and the institutional reforms already urged in earlier reports. No primary empirical data were collected, and the findings are doctrinal and indicative, not causal.