Summary
The Supreme Court has released a new report, "Judgments and Gender: Sensitivity and Compassion in Writing Judgments," drafted by a panel led by retired Justice Aniruddha Bose. It asks trial court judges to develop an "Emotional Quotient" alongside legal competence, control aggressive cross-examinations of sexual assault survivors and adopt "compassionate court practices" such as in-camera trials and pre-trial counselling.
This moves beyond the 2023 handbook, which focused only on removing patriarchal language from judgments.
WHY IN NEWS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
The report was published after the Supreme Court, in February 2026, set aside a March 2025 Allahabad High Court ruling that had classified an act of sexual assault as mere "preparation" rather than "attempt" to rape. During those hearings, CJI Surya Kant reportedly called the 2023 handbook "too Harvard-oriented" for practical use, prompting the National Judicial Academy to build a more usable, trauma-informed framework for trial courts.
Standard News
An "Emotional Quotient" for Judges Isn't a Soft Idea. It's a Structural Fix.
The easy answer would be to read this report as one more list of words judges shouldn't use - a glossary update, filed next to the 2023 handbook. That reading misses what actually changed. The 2023 handbook fixed vocabulary.
It told judges to stop writing "eve-teasing" and start writing "sexual harassment." That was necessary, but it treated the problem as linguistic - as if a survivor's ordeal in court was really about which noun a judgment used months after the trial ended.
It said nothing about the trial itself: the cross-examination, the waiting, the questions about a woman's past that have no bearing on whether a crime occurred. The 2026 report targets something harder to fix than vocabulary - it targets procedure and the disposition of the people running it.
It asks judges to actively intervene when a cross-examination turns into a second assault, to treat survivors as guests of the court rather than inconveniences to be processed and to hold proceedings in camera where privacy is what protects a survivor's willingness to testify at all.
That is a claim about what impartiality actually requires - and it's a claim worth sitting with, because it cuts against how most of us are taught to think about a neutral judge.
Quick Facts
Key numbers & takeaways — revise these first
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The new report is authored by a panel headed by retired Justice Aniruddha Bose, Director of the National Judicial Academy.
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It replaces the 2023 handbook issued under then-CJI D Y Chandrachud, which focused only on avoiding patriarchal language.
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The report leans on the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam's bar on indecent or annoying questions to survivors during cross-examination.
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It followed the Supreme Court's February 2026 suo motu reversal of a March 2025 Allahabad High Court order.
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The committee reviewed 125 trial court verdicts before drafting its recommendations.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
How the deontological duty to a fair trial and the survivor's Article 21 right to dignity are shown genuinely pulling against each other in this specific report, not conveniently agreeing
The exact procedural line between "controlling a hostile cross-examination" and "restricting a defence lawyer's constitutional rights" - and where this report leaves that judgment
The full Aparna Bhat v. State of MP (2021) case study and why it is the real origin point of this shift, not the 2023 handbook
A defended, specific institutional position on whether EQ training should be mandatory or discretionary for trial judges - with the cost of getting it wrong named on both sides
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