UP: 30-year-old man gets 7 years in prison for raping his underage ‘wife’ in 2015 | Meerut News

MEERUT/BAREILLY: A 30-year-old man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for raping a 13-year-old minor girl (now 22) in 2015 after she eloped with him and got married. However, the girl returned to her parents after two months and later returned to her husband’s house. The couple now have two children and are expecting another.

The Bareilly court’s order came on Wednesday and the couple now plans to appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court.

After her escape, the girl returned in May 2015, after which her father filed a complaint of abduction in Bareilly. An FIR was filed under sections 363 (abduction) and 366 (abduction, abduction or forced marriage of a woman, etc.) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The police conducted a medical examination of the minor girl, after which the attending doctor claimed that “no definite opinion can be given regarding sexual assault”.

During investigation, the police recorded the statement of the minor girl under Section 161 of the Penal Code, following which the FIR was supplemented with relevant sections of the Pocso Act and Section 376 of the Penal Code (rape).

In her statement before the Justice of the Peace under Section 164 of the Criminal Code (CPC), the girl said, “I eloped and got married of my own free will. He did not force me to do anything and I am in a happy marriage with him and I only want to live with him.”

However, since she was a minor, her testimony was not admissible in court.

During the trial, the woman claimed that a policewoman forced her to sign a blank sheet of paper. “Throughout the trial, she denied the prosecution’s theory of kidnapping and rape,” said lawyer Mohd Firoz.

According to Section 375 (sixth definition) of the International Penal Code (IPC), “a man commits ‘rape’, with or without the consent of a woman, if she is below 18 years of age.”