Man gets 20 years in prison for raping his underage niece | Ahmedabad News

The POCSO court awarded compensation of Rs 600,000 to the victim and said, “It is established law that corroborated portions of the evidence of a hostile witness regarding the commission of an offence are admissible… Merely because a witness deviates from the statement in the FIR, the evidence cannot be considered totally unreliable… When a witness turns hostile and undermines the judicial process, the court cannot stand silently and all efforts must be made to bring out the truth. The criminal justice system cannot be subverted by gullible witnesses acting under pressure, enticement or intimidation…”

Examining the medical evidence recorded during the trial, the court held, “The victim can be called a guided witness as she is following what she has been taught by her family. The victim and the accused are related to each other and hence the statement of the victim (is distorted) but the victim has (previously) recorded a statement under CrPC 164 and has stated the facts. Moreover, the medical evidence as well as the conduct also militates against the accused.”

According to the court, the defendant’s behavior during the trial was “revealing” when he was asked why the victim “feared his presence and asked to turn off the screen on which his image was shown.”

“To both questions, the accused simply answered indifferently: ‘That is not true’… The accused’s behavior can be judged by the fact that the victim came to court accompanied by the accused’s lawyer and her mother and grandmother, the accused’s mother. This proves that the accused ‘convinced’ the prosecution witness…”, the court said.

In April 2022, the chargesheet states, the incident took place in a village under the jurisdiction of Vadodara city police. The accused had lured the victim with chocolates to accompany him to a deserted area when she was out with her friends to collect wildflowers. While the accused was forcing himself on the victim, her friends returned home and informed the victim’s mother about the incident.

The court heard a total of 16 witnesses, including five children who were related to the victim and the defendant; in addition, 42 documents and circumstantial evidence were evaluated.