Man gets 20-year jail for raping minor niece | Ahmedabad News

A Special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) court in Vadodara has sentenced a 24-year-old man to 20-year rigorous imprisonment, despite the victim and her parents turning hostile during the trial. The accused is a convict in a 2022 case of rape of his minor niece in a village on the outskirts of Vadodara city.

The court — terminating the victim a “tutored witness” due to her “family relation” with the accused — relied on medical evidence and “demeanor” of the accused in awarding the sentence. According to the 56-page order delivered by Special POCSO Judge Priyanka Agarwal, despite the fact that the victim and her parents turned hostile during the trial, the court could not be a “spectator” and thus, considered that the medical and corroborative evidence were “against the accused”.

Awarding a compensation of Rs 6 lakh to the victim, the POCSO court said: “It is settled law that corroborated part of evidence of a hostile witness regarding commission of offence is admissible… Merely because a witness deviates from the statement made in the FIR, the evidence cannot be held to be totally unreliable… If a witness becomes hostile to subvert the judicial process, the court shall not stand as a mute spectator and every effort should be made to bring home the truth. Criminal justice system cannot be overturned by gullible witnesses who act under pressure, inducement or intimidation…”

While considering medical evidence that had been placed on record during the trial, the court held: “The victim can be termed a tutored witness as she is following what she has been taught by her family. The victim and the accused are related to each other and, therefore, the victim’s statement is (distorted), but the victim has (previously) recorded a statement under CrPC 164 and stated the facts. Moreover, medical evidence as well as the demeanor are also against the accused.”

According to the court, the demeanor of the accused was “revealing” during the trial, when he was asked about the reason why the victim “feared his presence, and requested to turn off the screen when it displayed his picture.”

“To both the questions, the accused simply replied differently with, ‘This is not true’… The conduct of the accused can be gauged from the fact that the victim has come to the court, escorted by the lawyer of the accused, and accompanied by her mother and grandmother, who is the mother of the accused. It proves that the accused has ‘won over’ the prosecution witness…,” the court said.

In April 2022, the prosecution case states, the incident took place in a village under the jurisdiction of the Vadodara city police. The accused had lured the victim with chocolates to accompany him to a deserted area when she was out to collect wild flowers with her friends. While the accused forced himself upon the victim, her friends returned home and informed the victim’s mother about the incident.

The court had examined a total of 16 witnesses, of whom five were children and related to the victim and the accused; 42 documentary and circumstantial evidence on record were also analysed.