A Bench of Justice Ashok Kumar Verma and Ritu Bahri was hearing a plea filed by a Haryana man against the order passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Faridabad, whereby he had been convictedpf rape under section 376 of IPC and Section 4 of POCSO Act. (File) Holding that presence of semen is not necessary to prove that a sexual assault has been committed on a minor, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Saturday upheld a lower court verdict convicting a man for raping a minor. A Bench of Justice Ashok Kumar Verma and Ritu Bahri was hearing a plea filed by a Haryana man against the order passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Faridabad, whereby he had been convictedpf rape under section 376 of IPC and Section 4 of POCSO Act.
His lawyer argued that the trial court gave no opportunity to cross-examine the victim and hence the testimony of the victim cannot be made basis for convicting the appellant. The lawyer further submitted that as per medical report no external injury was seen on the victim’s body.
The Bench, after hearing the matter, observed, “In cases of sexual assault against children, the first, and most important, piece of evidence, is always the statement of the victim…Evaluation of the evidence of child witnesses, especially where they are the victim, is always a tricky affair. Combating, and, at times, conflicting, considerations come into play in such cases. On the one hand, there exists a presumption that a child of tender years would not, ordinarily, lie. The applicability, or otherwise, of this presumption, would necessarily depend, to a large extent, on the age of the child….the court is also required to be alive to the fact that children are impressionable individuals, especially when they are younger in age, and are, therefore, more easily tutored. The possibility of a small child, whose cognitive and intellectual faculties are yet not fully developed, being compelled to testify in a particular manner, cannot be easily gainsaid”.
The bench further said that the “presumption” is that every witness is competent to depose, unless the court considers that the person is prevented from doing so. The Bench held that once a child witness…is found competent to depose to the facts and reliable, one such evidence could be the basis of conviction.
“We are not convinced with the arguments of the appellant that no mark of external injury was found on the victim and as per FSL report semen could not be detected and as such no offence under Section 4 of the POCSO Act is made out against the appellant. Merely semen could not be found, does not mean that offence under Section 4 of the POCSO Act has not been committed,” the Bench held.
The Bench added, “Child rape cases are cases of perverse lust for sex where even innocent children are not spared in pursuit of the sexual pleasure. There cannot be anything more obscene than this. It is a crime against humanity. Many such cases are not even brought to light because of social stigma attached thereto. According to some surveys, there has been steep rise in the child rape cases. Children need special care and protection. In such cases, responsibility on the shoulders of the courts is more onerous so as to provide proper legal protection to these children. Their physical and mental immobility call for such protection. Children are the natural resource of our country and they are country’s future. Hope of tomorrow rests on them. In our country, a girl child is in a very vulnerable position and one of the modes of her exploitation is rape besides other mode of sexual abuse. These factors point towards a different approach required to be adopted.”
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
