Bombay HC frees man convicted for raping six-year-old

Bombay high court (HC) on Monday set free a 29-year-old Dahisar resident who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl

Bombay high court (HC) on Monday set free a 29-year-old Dahisar resident who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl in August 2014, at Kandivli.

Bombay high court. (HT File)

The bench of justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik found it unsafe to convict the accused solely based on the survivor’s testimony, after noticing contradictions in her evidence.

“We find that the evidence of PW-5 (survivor) creates a doubt regarding the identity of the accused,” said the bench. “In these circumstances, it would be highly unsafe to convict the appellant solely based on the testimony of the victim,” it added.

The 29-year-old was accused of raping the minor and then brutally thrusting a broom in her private parts. The incident, according to police, took place in wee hours of August 20, 2014, when the girl was sleeping with her mother, a destitute, outside a temple in Kandivli, (West).

In the morning, when the mother woke up, she found her daughter missing. Later, she was shocked to find her daughter crying in a neighbouring lane, with a broom thrust in her private parts, resulting in bleeding injuries.

The girl was taken to a civic hospital where medical examination revealed that she was raped and sodomised by the culprit, before inserting the broom in her private parts.

The accused was arrested in connection with the crime, primarily on the suspicion of the survivor’s mother, who claimed he was following them for a few days before the incident and had also tried to initiate a dialogue with her.

He was tried for the heinous crime. The prosecution examined 11 witnesses and relied on 30 documents to bring home his guilt. A special court under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, accepted the prosecution evidence and convicted the man for the crime, primarily based on the survivor’s testimony, and had sentenced him to life imprisonment.

He had moved in appeal before HC where advocate Tanveer Khan argued on his behalf that it was unsafe to convict the Dahisar resident based on available evidence, especially, as DNA fingerprinting had ruled out his complicity in the crime.

Additional public prosecutor Dr FR Shaikh, on the other hand, supported the conviction. He asserted that the findings recorded by the trial court were based on correct appreciation of evidence on record and did not call for any interference by HC.

HC, however, refused to accept the prosecutor’s argument, noticing that the survivor’s testimony was inconsistent with regards to the identity of the accused.

The bench noted that when the accused was shown to the survivor in the trial court, she identified him as a friend of her father. She said he used to come to meet her father and, therefore she knew him well. However, in cross-examination, she claimed that she had not seen him before the incident. Besides, her mother had also revealed his name to police as “Anand” and this, the court said, adds to serious doubt about his identity.

Besides, the bench noted that there was no corroboration in the form of medical or forensic evidence. On the contrary, the DNA of the swabs found on the clothes of the survivor did not match with that of the accused, and thus had ruled out his complicity.