On Monday, the special court under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has convicted a 49-year-old man from Bandra to 10 years imprisonment for raping and impregnating a minor relative who was staying with him to look after his children following his wife’s death.

As per the prosecution’s case, the accused’s wife died in 2015, after which her family decided to leave her 17-year-old niece with the accused to look after his two children. After the relatives left for their village in Telangana, the teen stayed with the accused, his children and his mother in law at his residence in Bandra.

The teen claimed that in February 2016, when her grandmother left the house to take the children to school, the accused sexually abused her and threatened her with harm if she told anyone. In her testimony, she claimed that he repeated the assault multiple times.

A few days after the assaults, when she visited her aunt, she confided in her about the attacks. The aunt later informed the teen’s family which filed a complaint in August 2016 with the Bandra police station.

When the teen was taken for a medical examination, she was found two-months pregnant. During the pendency of the trial, she delivered the baby which was being looked after by an NGO. The POCSO court found the accused guilty of sexually abusing the girl on the basis of DNA tests and the victim’s deposition.

First Published: Jan 14, 2019 23:43 IST