No DNA Report Needed Where Evidence Is Clinching, Says MP High Court, Upholding Rape Conviction

The Madhya Pradesh High Court's Gwalior Bench has upheld the conviction of a man for kidnapping, raping and attempting to murder a two-year-old girl, while modifying the life sentence awarded to him for one of the charges to a fixed term of 20 years' rigorous imprisonment without remission.

A division bench of Justice G.S. Ahluwalia and Justice Anuradha Shukla heard the appeal filed by Mukesh Jatav against his conviction under Sections 366, 376(2)(i) & (m) and 307 IPC. The 5th Additional Sessions Judge, Gwalior, had in 2017 sentenced him to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment, life imprisonment, and 10 years' rigorous imprisonment respectively, with fines.

The prosecution's case was that on July 13, 2014, the victim and her father were outside their house when the appellant, an acquaintance of the father, arrived on the pretext of playing with the child. He suddenly grabbed her, started a motorcycle parked nearby with the key still in its ignition, and fled towards Gwalior. The father and a neighbour, Indresh, gave chase but could not catch him. When the child could not be traced, an FIR was lodged the same evening at police station Mohna. She was recovered nearly nineteen hours later from roadside bushes in village Nayagaon on the A.B. Road, on information given by the appellant, and her medical examination confirmed that she had been raped and left with multiple injuries on her body.

Before the High Court, Advocate Ashok Jain, for the appellant, argued that his client was falsely implicated over a financial dispute with the victim's father, that no DNA report was proved, and that the victim was never examined to identify the "predator." Public Prosecutor C.P. Singh, for the State, submitted that the named FIR, the ocular evidence, and the medical report left no room to doubt the conviction.

The bench rejected the enmity defence outright, noting that the appellant "never" disclosed what the financial dispute was or how much money was involved, and that he lacked "the courage to state the fact of this enmity on oath." It held that "enmity was only of a colour of hypothesis in this case and was never established as a fact."

On the absence of the victim's testimony, the court invoked Section 36 of the POCSO Act, which bars a child from being exposed to the accused while testifying, and the Supreme Court's ruling in Sakshi vs. Union of India, to hold that dock identification by a two-year-old was never a realistic requirement. It also relied on Sunil vs. State of M.P. (2017) to reject the argument that a rape conviction cannot stand without a DNA report, observing that the appellant had never even asked the trial court to summon one.

Applying the "last seen" doctrine and the burden under Section 106 of the Evidence Act, drawing on Teja vs. State of U.P. (1956) and Ravasaheb vs. State of Karnataka (2023), the bench held that the appellant had offered no explanation for what happened to the child after he fled with her, or for her injuries. Leaving her, badly injured, inside roadside bushes at night, the court said, showed his "sole intention was to facilitate the death of child... so that she may easily become the target of other predators."

While affirming the conviction under all three sections, the bench flagged that the trial court's life sentence under Section 376(2)(i) had effectively meant imprisonment for the remainder of the appellant's natural life, even though the provision also permits a fixed-term life sentence. Noting the absence of any proven criminal antecedents, the court converted this to a definite term of 20 years' actual rigorous imprisonment, with no remission. The other two sentences were left undisturbed, and all substantive sentences were directed to run concurrently.

The appeal was accordingly "partly allowed," with the court directing that a certified copy of the judgment be sent to the trial court and jail authorities for compliance.

Case Title: Mukesh Jatav vs. The State of Madhya Pradesh

Date of Judgment: July 1, 2026

Bench: Justice G.S. Ahluwalia and Justice Anuradha Shukla