POCSO Act | Punjab & Haryana High Court Upholds Convict's Life Sentence Based On Solely Testimony Of 13-Yr Old Victim

Basing the proof of charge on solitary, unblemished testimony of the victim, the Punjab & Haryana High Court upheld conviction and life imprisonment of a man for committing rape upon a 13-year old girl in Haryana. The Division Bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Kuldeep Tiwari rejected the contention that testimony of the victim lost credibility because her mother deviated from her previously made statement. "The cardinal principal for construing whether the charges drawn against the Convict appellant are well founded, and or, are ill founded, is made dependent solitarily on the unblemished testification of the victim, than the testification contrary thereto, as becomes rendered by any other prosecution witness. Therefore, when for all the reasons (supra), this Court has assigned immense creditworthiness to the testification, as became rendered by the victim. therefore, any exculpatory testification, as becomes rendered by the mother of the victim, thus becomes completely inconsequential," observed the court.The observations were made in a criminal appeal filed by the accused against his conviction and sentence of imprisonment under Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and Section 506 of IPC.According to the prosecution, the 13-year old girl had informed her parents about the incident after she fell sick and started vomiting. An investigation was conducted and after examining the medical evidence, chargesheet was filed. The accused was charged for commission of offences punishable under Sections 376(2n), 376(3) and 506 of IPC.Counsel for the accused had argued that he had been falsely implicated and as the mother of the victim had given contradictory statements, the testimony of the victim lost its credibility.Besides rejecting the contention, the court took note of testimony of the Doctor who examined the victim and stated that she was admitted with seven weeks live fetus.Insofar as counsel for the accused had asserted that the DNA report was inconclusive and thus exculpatory, the court observed that the conclusions in the DNA report were based on insufficiencies of the DNA and/or degradation of DNA.As such, the DNA report could not lead the court to dismiss the confidence inspired by the testimony of the victim.Lending credence to the victim's testimony and finding no merit in the accused's contentions, the appeal was dismissed.Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (PH) 244Title: X v. State of Haryana

POCSO Act | Punjab & Haryana High Court Upholds Convict's Life Sentence Based On Solely Testimony Of 13-Yr Old Victim

Aiman J. Chishti

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