Autopsy Of Truth: How Neutral Doctors Perform Postmortem On A Living Child's Testimony

In the prosecutions under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, the testimony of the child victim constitutes the primary evidence, while medical evidence is intended to play a corroborative role. Section 29 of the Act further strengthens this position by introducing a statutory presumption against the accused once foundational facts are proved.

Despite this legal framework, trial courts repeatedly witness prosecutions falter, not because of the child's testimony becoming unreliable, but because medical examination and testimony introduce uncertainty under the guise of neutrality.

Following the registration of an FIR, a child victim is subjected to medical examination as mandated under Section 27 of POCSO. The report generated at this stage subsequently becomes part of the prosecution evidence, and the examining doctor is later examined as a witness during trial. The doctors examined even before the registration of FIR is no exception.

In practice, medical neutrality in POCSO cases often translates into extreme minimalism: reports that record little, conclude nothing, and later cannot be meaningfully explained by the examining doctor.

This institutional ambiguity does not remain neutral inside a courtroom. It actively shapes the trial by manufacturing doubt, shifting focus from the accused's conduct to speculative alternative narratives, and placing an unjust burden on the child's testimony.

While judicial precedent and trial experience recognise that a child's testimony can suffice for conviction, in practice this protection is often eroded by the manner in which medical evidence is recorded and later presented.

It is this recurring courtroom situation, and its systemic consequences, that this article seeks to examine.

1) The Mysterious Examination where nothing gets recorded

Doctor is the first neutral body, the victim of sexual offences confronts either as mandated one post filing FIR or before one for a private check up.

A five-year-old asked to sit on a steel examination table.

A doctor leafs through a pre-printed medico-legal template, mechanically ticking boxes. In private hospitals, the format is often “inspired” by an old, half-page, half-hearted report lying somewhere in the file room.

The child cries, but nothing about that cry will enter the record.

What she said, what she feared, who brought her, what she felt, none of it will survive beyond that room.

By the time this report reaches the court, it will look like every other report: identical, dry, and empty.

And this emptiness becomes evidence.

Even though Section 27 POCSO and Section 184 BNSS mandate proper, detailed documentation during medical examination, most reports resemble blank templates with a few sterile observations stitched in. Whether government or private, even sophisticated hospitals are no exception.”

And most ironically not so most sophisticated private establishment would simply refer the child to government hospitals to keep themselves stay out of trouble whatsoever.

But somehow, miraculously, a common declaration is made:

“Vaginal opening wider than of her age. No discharge, No foul smell”

One doctor call it the “vaginal opening.”

One prefers “vaginal orifice opening.” and another uses “introitus widening”.

Neither will ever attach the age-wise genital measurement chart, because most have never used one.

And when asked in cross-examination:

Q: What is the standardized chart used to measure normal vaginal opening size for a 5-year-old?

A: “There is none.”

Irony is, most never heard of one. But they know it was widened. But could never say why?

Brilliant neutrality. A masterclass in ambiguity that no sane defence would forget to attack.

2) Comfort of Speculation

The so called neutral expert witness would not conclusively write anything about the offense but would say yes to every speculation of the defence while the cross-examination ceremony happens.

1) Whether such widening could be due to obesity?

Yes possible

2) Whether such widening could be due to fungal or bacterial infection?

That too possible

3) Whether such widening could be due to poor hygiene especially due to prolonged usage of diaper?

Of course possibilities are there!

Every single time, these magic words "possible" appear with perfect timing, as if rehearsed through years of clinical folklore.

But they never recorded obesity, they never recorded hygiene, not even the infection in their medical report.

Yet in court, these speculative possibilities acquire the status of divine revelation.

This pattern is not individual malpractice. It is institutional ambiguity.

Doctors receive no standardised measurement charts, no structured forensic history format, and no refresher training.

In the absence of scientific tools, “possibility” becomes their safest answer a shield to avoid committing to any definite opinion. Most possibly to save themselves from Medical Council petitions.

Notably, most of these “possibilities” find no mention in the original medical report and surface for the first time only during cross-examination transforming medical neutrality into defence ammunition.

3) The 'Neutral' Doctor Who Forgets Everything by the Time They Are Summoned

In many courts, by the time a private or hospital-based doctor is summoned (often months or years later), the doctor remembers absolutely nothing. Not the face. Not the narration. Not the circumstances. Nothing. But the fact that they examine 50-60 children every day.

The court was left with a witness who remembered nothing except reasons why abuse might not have occurred.

But the defence uses this neutral amnesia as credibility:

"See, the doctor is impartial. They remember nothing except the possibility that there was no sexual assault.”

4) Pressure of Cross

As soon as the defence starts attacking credibility of the doctor just for the defence's psychological art of cross examination:

Doctors start contradicting their own statements. They retreat into vagueness. They disown the report. They reinterpret their own findings. And in extreme cases, they even claim I wrote it because the management told me to but rarely clarifies whether it's request or order or protocol.

Of course leaving to the interpretation of the defence as usual.

Neutrality becomes cowardice under pressure. Cowardice becomes contradiction. Contradiction becomes reasonable doubt.

Behind this collapse is a deep systemic fear.

Private hospital doctors fear being dragged into prolonged litigation.

Government doctors fear departmental enquiries.

Both fear being accused of “wrong documentation.”

The safest route is vagueness, a vagueness the defence weaponises perfectly.

5) Convenient vagueness

POCSO courts function with extremely high thresholds:

Penetration need not be deep, injuries may not always be present, medical evidence is only corroborative, child testimony is primary, absence of injuries does not rule out assault.

In Lok Mal @ Loku v. The State of Uttar Pradesh, the Hon'ble Supreme Court held that the absence of injury marks on a victim's private parts cannot by itself discredit her testimony.

Yet the doctors simply leave the court with a bland, minimalist report an empty canvas on which the defence can paints its narrative. A forensic vacuum that becomes the defence's playground to even doubt the child's testimony.

6) Neutrality as the gift to defence

In reality, this sacrosanct neutrality creates fertile ground for defence doubt, ecosystem for acquittal, opportunities to blame the child's family, narratives accusing the victim's side of fabricating allegations due to civil or family disputes

This is where neutrality becomes complicity. Because when doctors neither document statements nor commit to findings, they unintentionally allow the defence to weaponize neutrality to destroy the child's dignity.

A 5-year-old child's trauma becomes a chessboard for adult revenge games made possible, ironically, by “neutral medical evidence.”

The medical system claims neutrality.

The legal system defends neutrality.

And the child pays the price for both of system's hostility.

This pattern, repeated across courts, demonstrates that the issue is not isolated negligence but a systemic failure in how medical neutrality is understood and practised in POCSO trials.

In POCSO trials, neutrality has become a euphemism for careless documentation, selective amnesia, convenient speculation, institutional fear, bureaucratic safety and a forensic vacuum in which truth suffocates quietly

If this is neutrality, perhaps the system needs to rethink whether children require neutrality or accuracy.

Because most doctors conducting POCSO examinations are not trained in forensic paediatrics, not trained in trauma-informed medical interviewing, and have no institutional protocol beyond filling a template.

The system expects them to function as expert witnesses without giving them expert training.

India doesn't need doctors who are neutral.

It needs doctors who are competent, trained, and accountable.

And a POCSO system where neutrality does not become another clinical instrument to dismantle the child's truth.

If the POCSO system truly wants accuracy, it needs reforms, not vague neutrality:

a) Mandatory forensic paediatric training for doctors conducting POCSO exams. Not a paediatrician referring to Gynaecologist and gynaecologist pointing finger on paediatrician.

b) Standardised genital injury assessment charts with age-specific measurement.

c) Detailed Section 27 POCSO compliant narrative formats capturing the child's words, emotional state, and context.

d) Trauma-informed interviewing protocols

e) Time-bound summoning of doctors to avoid memory decay.

In the end, it is not the doctor who faces the consequences of ambiguity.

It is the judge.

The lacuna created by the medical witness pushes the trial judge into a defensive position forced to justify a decision made in a vacuum, to weigh a child's trauma against a report that says nothing, and to bear the moral burden of a doubt manufactured by institutional silence.

And the victim is forced to pin her fate on a single assumption: that the judge, at least, will not be prejudiced, because neutrality from doctors, prosecutors, and police is already a luxury the system cannot offer her.

Neutrality without competence is injustice.

Author is an Advocate. Views Are Personal.