"Juveniles Treated Too Leniently In This Country, Legislature Has Still Not Learnt Any Lessons From Horrors Of Nirbhaya": MP High Court

While upholding the conviction of a juvenile for rape of a four-year-old girl, the Madhya Pradesh High Court lamented the "lenient" laws in the country so far as juvenile offenders are concerned.

Justice Subodh Abhyankar sitting at Indore observed,

“Court is once again at pains to observe that juveniles in this country are being treated rather too leniently, and that the Legislature,to the utter misfortune of the victims of such crimes, has still not learnt any lessons from the horrors of Nirbhaya…Although such voices are being raised time and again by the Constitutional Courts of this country, but to the utter dismay of the victims, they have not been able to make any impact on the legislature even after a decade of Nirbhaya which took place in the year 2012.”

The remarks were made after the Court noted that the appellant, along with seven other juveniles, had absconded on November 13, 2019, and remained untraceable.

The appellant was initially convicted by Sessions Court under Sections 376(2)(i)(k) of the IPC and Sections 5(m)(i)/6 of the POCSO Act, 2012, and sentenced to ten years rigorous imprisonment. The incident occurred on December 29, 2017, when the victim's mother discovered her four-year-old daughter unconscious and bleeding from her private parts after being taken upstairs by the appellant.

Appellant's counsel argued that the case was fabricated due to a rent dispute and questioned the victim's age documentation. However, the court stated that “there was no reason for the mother of the victim, who herself had reached on the spot soon after the incident where she found the appellant standing beside her daughter, who was already bleeding, to lodge a false case against the appellant and to save the real culprit. The appellant has been rightly convicted.”

Further the court found victim's age to be credible based on medical testimony and circumstantial evidence. It remarked, “The prosecution has sufficiently proved the victim's age and the nature of the injuries sustained, corroborating the allegations.”

Case title: Rishabh Atle Minor Through Next Friend (Father) Jaikishan Atle Versus The State Of Madhya Pradesh

Case no: CRIMINAL APPEAL No. 4232 of 2019

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