Abstract

Criminal law which respects the social ambitions and norms of the society is designed to punish as well as to reform the criminals, but hardly takes note of the by-product of crime, its victims. The plight of victims of crimes has always been of interest to society. This is evidenced by the importance given to the victim by the media, which attempts to highlight the trauma that the victim suffers, sensationalising the same in the process. It is to be noted that in the entire process of administration of the criminal justice system, the victims finally end up getting no relief for the damage suffered by them. The case for rehabilitation and compensation to victims of crime rests primarily on the criminal who inflicted injury against the person or property must compensate for the loss and secondarily on the State which failed to protect the victims must pay the victims for the loss due to him. Criminologists’ early concentration was solely on the issue of punishment, but this shifted when they realised that the victim of crime gets nothing out of the entire criminal justice system or gets so-called satisfaction from seeing the offender punished. As a result, jurists, prosecutors, and others in all countries began to devote their whole attention to the cause of the victim in the form of compensation, and a dispute erupted regarding the manner, means, and extent of compensation. Thus, victim compensation is one of the major aspects of reparation or restoration of the harm or injury caused to the victim due to the commission of the crime. Monetary assistance, in one way or another other, has always benefitted the victims in the diminution of their sufferings. Thus, in this paper, we endeavoured to address the intricacies involved in granting the compensation to victims.

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