Delhi High Court: A Single Judge Bench comprising of Mukta Gupta, J. allowed a criminal appeal filed against the order of the trial court wherein the appellant was convicted for the offences punishable under Sections 363, 366, 342 and 376 IPC.
The appellant-accused was alleged to have kidnapped the prosecutrix and raped her due to which she became pregnant. It was alleged by the prosecutrix that she was below the age of 16 years in 2012 when she was kidnapped by the appellant. It was the case of the prosecution that the appellant was known to the family of the prosecutrix; he kidnapped her and committed rape on her. The appellant denied the charges. He was, however, convicted by the trial court as aforementioned. Aggrieved thus, the appellant filed the present appeal.
The High Court perused the record and found that according to the medical report, she had sexual intercourse even earlier to the alleged kidnapping. Furthermore, as per the defence witness Onkar Singh, Head Master of the school where the prosecutrix was first admitted, prosecutrix’ date of birth was 1-9-1995. This meant that she was more than 16 years of age at the time of the alleged incident. Therefore, as per the law in force at the time of alleged incident, the prosecutrix was capable of consenting to sexual intercourse. The prosecutrix stated that she came to know of her pregnancy in March 2012; whereas, the medical report proved that the foetus was conceived only in April. In such facts and circumstances, the Court was of the view that the defence taken by the appellant that he was falsely implicated in the case by the father of the prosecutrix on coming to know of her pregnancy was a plausible defence. The case put forth by the complainant-father was held to be a cooked up story. Resultantly, the appeal was allowed; the order impugned was set aside, and the appellant was acquitted of the charges as framed. [Jitender Singh v. State (NCT of Delhi),2018 SCC OnLine Del 10632, dated 17-08-2018]
