Exactly 65 years ago, the Supreme Court took a serious view of sexual assault cases. It boldly altered the general rule in a criminal trial to hold that in such cases, a rape survivor’s sole testimony , if found credible, would be enough to record conviction of the accused. No corroborative evidence would be required, it said.Pronouncing the judgment in Rameshwar vs State of Rajasthan on December 20, 1951, Justice Vivian Bose had said the minor rape survivor ’s narration of the sexual assault to her mother, her testimony to the court and the evidence given by her mother based on the daughter’s narration taken together was good enough to record conviction of the accused.“I am satisfied that in this case, considering the conduct of the girl and her mother from start to finish, no corroboration beyond the statement of the child to her mother is necessary,” Justice Bose had said while upholding the conviction.Since then, this principle has remained the foundation of rape case trials in India. Last week, the SC reiterated it, “Seeking corroboration to a statement before relying upon the same as a rule, in such cases, would literally amount to adding insult to injury. Deposition of the prosecutrix has, thus, to be taken as a whole. Needless to reiterate that the victim of rape is not an accomplice and her evidence can be acted upon without corroboration. She stands at a higher pedestal than an injured witness does.”But in the ‘Mathura rape case’ of 1972, the golden scale to weigh evidence had slipped from the SC’s hands. The brother of a minor girl (Mathura) lodged a complaint with Maharashtra police about her alleged abduction. She was brought to the police station. After asking the relatives to sit outside, two policemen sexually assaulted the girl.The trial court took a tangential route to acquit the policemen — the girl was habituated to sexual intercourse and did not raise an alarm when raped. The Bombay HC followed Justice Bose’s guidelines and convicted the accused. But the SC, in Tuka Ram and Another vs Maharashtra [1979 SCR (1) 810] agreed with the trial court and acquitted the policemen.Course correction was done by Justice Krishna Iyer on August 14, 1980 in Rafiq vs State of UP [1981 (1) SCR 402]. Since then, barring a few exceptions, the judiciary has been stringent in its approach towards those facing rape charges.Defence lawyers’ age-old weapon to demolish a rape survivor’s evidence has been to seek corroborating evidence. They know that rapes are committed in seclusion. It is hard to find independent witnesses. Justice Iyer had said, “Corroboration as a condition for judicial reliance on the testimony of a prosecutrix is not a matter of law, but a guidance of prudence under given circumstances.”In the 1990s, the SC displayed more sensitivity towards rape survivors. In Bodhisattwa Gautam case [1996 SCC (1) 490], it said, “Rape is thus not only a crime against the person of a woman (victim), it is a crime against the entire society. It destroys the entire psychology of a woman and pushes her into deep emotional crisis. It is only by her sheer willpower that she rehabilitates herself in society which, on coming to know of the rape, looks down upon her in derision and contempt. Rape is, therefore, the most hated crime. It is a crime against basic human rights and is also violative of the victim's most cherished of the fundamental rights, namely, the right to life contained in Article 21.“To many feminists and psychiatrists, rape is less a sexual offence than an act of aggression aimed at degrading and humiliating women. The rape laws do not, unfortunately, take care of the social aspect of the matter and are inept in many respects.”Given the sanctity attached to a rape survivor’s evidence, there has also been a spurt in incidents in the last decade where the court’s sympathy had been misused to implicate innocent persons in rape cases.In Raju vs State of Madhya Pradesh [2008 (15) SCC 133], the SC said, “It cannot be lost sight of that rape causes the greatest distress and humiliation to the victim but, at the same time, a false allegation of rape can cause equal distress, humiliation and damage to the accused as well.”In Abbas Ahmed Choudhary vs Assam [2010 (12) SCC 115], the SC had said, “We are conscious of the fact that in a matter of rape, statement of the prosecutrix must be given primary consideration but, at the same time, the broad principle that prosecution has to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt applies equally to a case of rape and there can be no presumption that a prosecutrix would always tell the entire story truthfully."As times have changed, trial judges face the unenviable task of shifting through a rape survivor’s evidence to do justice by punishing the rapists and also those who level false rape allegations. Recently, a Thane court set a trend by initiating perjury proceedings against a minor whose false sexual assault charges had landed her own father in jail for nearly three years.