Chandigarh: Man gets 20-year jail for 12-year-old stepdaughter’s rape

The court of additional sessions judge Yashika sentenced a man to 20 years’ imprisonment for raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter.

The court also imposed a fine of ₹75,000 on the man while convicting him under Sections 6 and 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

While pronouncing the order, the court observed that the child victim had stated that the accused is her stepfather and this fact suggests the extent of her faith and trust she placed in him. The accused, however, shattered her trust, the court observed.

Girl had confided in schoolteacher

The victim, aged 12, had first confided in her schoolteacher about the sexual assault. The teacher had initially counselled her but after it came to light that she had been raped, she was sent to the Snehalya. After she narrated her ordeal to the authorities here, the Superintendent of Snehalya for Girls Ashiana, Sector 15, lodged a complaint on September 29, 2022.

Girl’s testimony in court

Shaking with fear and then made comfortable by the court, the victim deposed that she used to reside in Bapu Dham Colony with her mother, two younger brothers and stepfather. But since September 23, 2022, she has been residing at Ashiana, Sector-15, Chandigarh.

She told the court that she had been raped by the accused multiple times, the first time when she was alone at home.

The court observed tears in her eyes and the trauma on her face as she was narrating the incident.

She revealed that she had not told anything to her mother as the accused used to tell her that her mother won’t trust her.

She then confided in her schoolteacher, who is a counsellor, following which her medical examination was conducted.

The girl’s mother did not support her daughter’s statements in court.

Psychosocial deviants can’t lay any claim to leniency: Court

Perpetrators of sexual offences on innocent children are psychosocial 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. The innocence of the victim in the present case, who had barely savoured the first fragrance of childhood, let alone adolescence, was brutally plundered by the convict who happens to be her own stepfather.

One may fall short of words to empathise the suffering, pain, trauma, turmoil and harassment, the young victim of 13 years of age had to undergo, when her dignity is being painted in clay by her own stepfather.

The trauma the victim is bound to suffer, on account of convict is bound to be lifelong. Such deplorable act of treating once own daughter as a play thing in an attitude of savage is liable to inexorably and mercilessly punished in the severest term.

What court said on her testimony

The girl child stepped into the witness box as prosecution witness (PW-2) and narrated the sequence of events. She was cross-examined by the defence counsel but her testimony could not be shattered during her cross-examination.

Her version clubbed with her demeanour satisfies the court conscience that victim is deposing truthfully. Her testimony is unblemished, worthy of credence and capable to be relied, said the court.