No respite against sexual assault of children although legislature has provided stringent punishments: Punjab and Haryana High Court
The Punjab and Haryana High Court last week observed that sexual abuse of children is alarming and there is no respite although the legislature has provided stringent punishments for the sexual offences against children.
Court further said that perpetrators of sexual offences on innocent children are psycho-social deviants, who cannot lay any claim to leniency.
"It is in the order of nature, and is the sacred right of every living being to blossom from infancy, to childhood, to adolescence and, finally, to adulthood. This order of nature is thrown into violent disarray by the sexual predators of children...", further remarked a bench if Justice Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Justice Lalit Batra.
These observations were made by the High Court while upholding the judgment of conviction rendered by the Additional Sessions Judge, Faridabad, in terms of which, one Rajender was held guilty and convicted for the commission of offence punishable under Section 376 IPC.
Rajender's daughter, aged 14 years, student of Class-VII had made a complaint against her father (accused), stating that her father has been sexually assaulting her since she was seven (7) years of age.
She further alleged that as she was subjected to sexual assault by her father regularly, she was made to abort her pregnancies by her father by giving her abortion pills and that as and when she tried to narrate her sufferings to someone, she was given beatings by her father and for the said reason, she could not narrate her woes to anybody.
After perusal of the evidence, Court found that it was clearly established that there was no rhyme or reason for the victim/prosecutrix to depose falsely so as to expose her honour and dignity and also expose the whole family to the society risking the outcasting or ostracization and condemnation by the family circle as well as by the society.
"No girl of self-respect and dignity who is conscious of her chastity having expectations of married life and livelihood would accuse falsely against any other person of rape, much less against her father, sacrificing thereby her chastity and also expose the entire family to shame and at the risk of condemnation and ostracization by the society", the court said.
Dealing with the delay in filing the first information report, Court said that it was no ground to doubt the case of the prosecutrix. It said,
"Merely because the complaint was lodged less than promptly does not raise the inference that the complaint was false. The reluctance to go to the police is because of society's attitude towards such woman; it casts doubt and shame upon her rather than comfort and sympathize with her. Therefore, delay in lodging complaints in such cases does not necessarily indicate that her version is false."
Upholding the order on quantum of sentence, Court said that the innocence of the prosecutrix, who had barely savoured the first fragrance of childhood, let alone adolescence, was brutally plundered by her father, the deviancy of his act being augmented by the fact that he chose to sodomise her.
"The trauma that the prosecutrix is bound to suffer, on account of the appellant, is bound to be lifelong. Therefore, in operating the sentencing system, law should adopt the corrective machinery or the deterrence based on factual matrix. By deft modulation sentencing process be stern where it should be, and tempered with mercy where it warrants to be...", the division bench observed while dismissing the appeal.
Case Title: Rajender vs. State of Haryana