“There can never be a graver heinous crime than the father being charged of raping his daughter,” the Madras High Court has said and confirmed the conviction as well as life sentence imposed on an individual by a Mahila court in Madurai for raping his minor daughter under the influence of alcohol.
In a judgment reserved in the Madurai Bench of the High Court and delivered here, Justices R. Subbiah and A.D. Jagadish Chandira said the convict had behaved like a beast and committed a “brutal, inhuman and shameful” act. The assault would undoubtedly remain as an invisible scar in the mind of the young girl, they said.
Writing the judgment, Mr. Justice Subbiah said: “The relationship between a father and a daughter is always unique in this world than any other relationship. The accused, as a father, is expected to remain as a fortress for his wife and children and to protect them from any external abuse or interference and to remain as a person of dependant.
“On the contrary, in the present case, he stood himself as a fence which had eaten the crop. A daughter always looks up to her father as a shield of her dignity and honour which is an intrinsic facet of a family especially of father-daughter relationship. It shocks human conscience when the sanctity of father and daughter relationship is ravaged in such a sordid manner.”
The Bench also lamented that moral values in the society had gone down to such a level that seldom “we come across such an aberration which shudders our mind and soul. We have become accustomed to saying that females are not safe outside the house but in few cases, it is seen that they are not even safe inside their homes.”
The judges alqo quoted a poem by Henry Abbey for the victim girl and said: “Even though we feel that the sentence imposed on the appellant is inadequate, we could not also enhance the sentence than the one our legislators have indicated under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012.”
