Screen grab from Whistling Woods video, Dekh Le
The next time employers do background verification for potential candidates, it’s not just your Facebook, Linkedin profiles, or previous employers that they could seek to check on you. It may even be this government registry on sex offenders, for the men a tleast.
The Union home ministry, which is now working on a registry of sex offenders, has come up with a draft version of guidelines. And surprisingly (you figure out yourself whether this is a good or bad surprise), they have proposed inclusion of everybody who gets convicted for sexual offences.
And this includes not just the really bad ones like rape and aggravated sexual assault, but even your garden variety like voyeurism and stalking.
If this works out, we women can at the very least be assured of a pleasant commute to work without leering, ‘accidental’ brushing and bumping… you know how the rest of it goes.
The convicts may figure in the registry, to be uploaded on the national citizens portal set to be created under the Crime & Criminals Tracking Network & Systems(CCTNS) scheme, for periods varying from 4 years to 20 years, depending on the quantum of sentence.
The idea is to keep such offenders from taking up jobs in vulnerable communities, especially children, like a teaching job, nanny, school watchman, van drivers etc. Next time, these app-based taxi cab services like Ola and Uber plan to hire somebody, they can first check this registry to verify the employee before trying other avenues. It certainly makes the job easier and may help avoid incidents like the Delhi Uber rape case.
As per draft guidelines circulated last month to other ministries for their comments, those convicted of sexual offences will be obliged to provide all the prescribed information – this includes name and aliases, address, telephone no, passport no, employment and school/college details, photograph, fingerprints, DNA sample, PAN card no, Aadhaar card no and Voter ID No — to the jurisdictional police stations. They must also verify their address to the police station over a periodicity that may extend from once a year to every quarter of a year, depending on the prison term handed to them.
A person convicted of a sexual offence under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, will automatically be subject to be registered in the sex offenders register (SOR), and courts will not be needed to mention it separately in their order.
