Punjab & Haryana High Court Commutes Death Sentence Of Man Who Raped His Minor Daughter, Cites His Marginalised Background

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has commuted the death sentence imposed on a man convicted for raping his own minor daughter, considering that he belonged to a marginalised part of the society.

A division bench of Justice GS Sandhawalia and Justice Lapita Banerji said, "No doubt that the act as such is horrific and there can be no sympathy shown on the account of the fact that the accused has two more children..."

However, the Court added that the appellant apparently "belongs to the marginalized part of the society and was doing labour work and did not have any criminal background and he could not bring up one of the children who has also been given in adoption to his brother would also go on to show that it might have been for the purposes of not being able to maintain the child on the account of not having the substantial means, which only goes to substantiate the view which we are going to take of substituting the punishment with the second contingency (life sentence)."

The Court was hearing appeal against the judgement of Session Court which awarded death sentence to the convict subject to confirmation under Section 28(2) and Section 366 Cr.P.C. in a rape case lodged in 2020 under Sections 376(2)(n), 376(£), 376AB, 506 IPC and under Section 6 of the POCSO Act.

Facts In Brief 

In 2020, a man committed sexual intercourse upon her 12 years old daughter. The Trial Court on the ground of medical evidences and testimony of the victim and her mother, convicted the man and sentenced him to death under Section 6 of the POCSO Act.

The counsel for the petitioner argued that he was falsely implicated because his wife is having an affair with a former Sarpanch. 

After hearing the submission, the Court said, "There is no reason as such to doubt the sterling quality of the statement of the witness who had the onerous task of deposing against her father at the young age."

The appellant has, as such, not been able to put forth any line of defence which was clear from the statement under section 313 Cr.P.C also  wherein the only plea taken is that he had been falsely implicated in the present case and the police had lodged a false case against him and obtained his signatures on some blank papers on printed performa which was converted into a disclosure statement and a demarcation memo, the Court noted.

"No such defence was also taken that his wife was having an affair with the ex-Sarpanch as such due to which he has been falsely implicated which is now sought to be argued," it added.

The Court also outrightly rejected the argument that the minor victim was in a physical relationship with some other man and his father is implicated to hide her illicit relationship. 

"She had not even attained menarche (the first occurrence of mensuration) and was not even fully developed physically and her breast development was on stage 3 of tanner staging and, therefore, the argument that she was having independent relationship with someone else is not liable to be accepted. Merely because there is an improvement that she was also assaulted earlier 4-5 years ago, would not improve the case of the appellant in any manner," the Court observed.

Quantum of Sentence

On question that whether the sentence of death as such is liable to be affirmed, the Court noted that Section 6 of the POCSO Act stipulates punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault shall not be less than 20 years but which may extend to imprisonment for life and the third contingency is that the punishment can be of death.

Reliance was placed upon in Bachan Singh vs. State of Punjab, AIR 1980 SC 898, to underscore, "that the principle of the rarest of the rare cases is to be applied when the sentence of death is to be awarded."

The Court further referred to Kashi Nath Singh @Kallu Singh vs. The State of Jharkhand, (2023) 7 SCC 317,  wherein for the rape and murder of a 14 years old girl, the death penalty as such was converted into a fixed term sentence for 30 years without any benefit of remission keeping in view the fact that he was 26 years of age.

In the light of the above, the Court opined that, "the appellant, who was aged 53 years at the time when charge was framed against him on 10.03.2021, would deserve the sentence provided under the second option under Section 6 of the POCSO Act, which would extend to imprisonment for life for the remainder of his natural life keeping in view the fact that the crime as such was committed by the natural guardian i.e. father himself within the confines of the house."

Consequently, the plea was partially allowed.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (PH) 34

Title: State of Haryana v. XXXX 

Pawan Girdhar, Addl. A.G., Haryana.

Dr. Anju Sharma, Advocate, for the respondent (in MRC-6-2022) for the appellant (in CRA-D-159-2023).