Man sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping minor niece

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

The court — referring to the victim as a “teacher-witness” because of her “family relationship” to the accused — relied on the medical evidence and the accused’s “conduct” in reaching its verdict. According to the 56-page order issued by Special District Court 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 therefore found that the medical and corroborative evidence was “against the accused.”

Awarding a compensation of Rs 6 lakh to the victim, the POCSO court said, “It is settled law that the corroborated part of the evidence of a hostile witness regarding the commission of an offence is admissible… Merely because a witness deviates from the statement made in the FIR, the evidence cannot be held to be wholly unreliable… If a witness turns hostile so as to undermine the trial process, the court will not stand as a mute spectator and every effort should be made to bring out the truth. The criminal justice system cannot be subverted by gullible witnesses who act under pressure, inducement or intimidation…”

While considering the medical evidence placed on record during the trial, the court said, “The victim can be called a teacher witness as he is acting as per his family teachings. The victim and the accused are related to each other and hence the statement of the victim is (distorted) but the victim had (earlier) given a statement under CrPC 164 and given the facts. Further, the medical evidence as well as the conduct of the accused also militates against the accused.”

The court found the defendant’s behaviour to be “revealing” during the trial when he was asked why the victim “was afraid of his presence and asked to turn off the screen when his image was displayed on it”.

“The accused answered both questions indifferently: ‘That’s not true’… The conduct of the accused can be assessed from the fact that the victim came to court, escorted by the accused’s lawyer, and accompanied by her mother and grandmother, who is the accused’s mother. This proves that the accused ‘got’ the prosecution witness…” the court said.

In April 2022, according to the prosecution, the incident took place in a village under the Vadodara city police jurisdiction. The accused lured the victim with chocolates to accompany him to a deserted place while she was out collecting wild flowers with her friends. While the accused was forcing the victim into sex, her friends returned home and informed the victim’s mother about the incident.

The court heard evidence from a total of 16 witnesses, five of whom were children related to the victim and the accused, and reviewed 42 pieces of documentary and circumstantial evidence from the case file.

First message: Jul 04, 2024 at 01:37 IST