27-year-old PT teacher gets 5 years for sex assault on minor

MUMBAI: A special Pocso court recently convicted and sentenced a 27-year-old school physical training (PT) teacher to five years simple imprisonment for sexually assaulting a 5-year-old student in 2017. The accused had lifted her top and licked her.
The child had revealed the incident to her aunt. The court refused to accept the defence that since the child had not raised a hue and cry soon after the incident, her version was not trustworthy. The court said that being 5-years-old at the relevant time, she did not obviously have any understanding of 'sexual intent' or of 'sexualized behaviour'.
"She would therefore, not have been able to understand the act to which she had been subjected to. Further, she had also not suffered any physical pain due to the incident in question. Hence, she apparently being an introvert by nature, the same may very well have prevented her from immediately informing the monitor of her class or her class teacher...," special judge SJ Ansari said.
The court further said that the incident as deposed by the child is such that she could not have created the same out of her imagination. "This is because, she being a small child only 5 years of age, and belonging to a family where the women follow the practise of hijab and parda, would certainly not have been exposed to either hearing about, or seeing such incidents ie of a male pulling a female's T-shirt upwards and then licking her.... If the victim would have wanted to manufacture a falsehood, she would have rather stated a lie about the accused having either slapped her or pinched her hard, which are the only things comprehensible to a small child," the judge said.
The judge said that it will have to be appreciated that the child had already done whatever she could do, by disclosing the the incident to her family members on the day on which it had occurred. "Thereafter, it was not in her hands to lodge the report as that decision was in the hands of her family members. Even the victim's family members had first sought action by her school.
However, when it became clear that the school had washed it's hands off the incident after suspending the teacher, it was they who approached the police, after becoming aware about the attitude of the school authorities. The delay in lodging the FIR, has therefore, in my opinion, been able to be explained quite satisfactorily," the judge said.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)