LUCKNOW: A man, 22, charged with raping a three-year-old girl when he was 17 and tried as an adult in a Lucknow Pocso court since 2019 was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined Rs 1 lakh after being convicted this week, reports Pathikrit Chakraborty.
Legal clearance for the then teenage suspect to be tried as an adult was based on a medical test that purportedly confirmed he had “the mental maturity” of someone over 18 “while committing the offence and understanding its consequences”.
The court of additional district judge Vijendra Tripathi pronounced the judgment under sections 376 AB of the IPC (raping a woman under 12) and 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Posco Act, 2012. The convict would need to spend an additional three months in jail if he failed to deposit the fine. The money will go to the survivor.
DCP (west) Vishwajeet Srivastava said the case was registered on May 6, 2019, by Kakori police, based on a complaint by the survivor’s grandmother. The perpetrator, a neighbour, assaulted the girl in his house. “A watertight case was prepared, and the charge-sheet was filed on July 5, 2019,” Srivastava said.
Lucknow district govt counsel (criminal) Manoj Tripathi told TOI that the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, created classification of offences to enable courts to try minors in the age group 16-18 as adults for “heinous” crimes.
“In this case, the court treated the rape of three-year-old minor as a heinous offence.
In adherence to CM Yogi Adityanath’s directive, we pursued the case to ensure that the accused got the maximum.