Victim’s Testimony Unreliable, Major Improvements Made: Allahabad HC Acquits Police Constable Convicted In Minor's Rape Case

The bench of Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Shiv Shanker Prasad also observed that there were major improvements in the testimony of the victim and hence, the trial court was not justified in returning the finding of guilt against the accused-appellant.

“Finding of the court below that the guilt of the accused-appellant has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt is thus rendered unsustainable. We hold that the prosecution has failed to prove the guilt of the accused-appellant beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Court held as it set aside the judgment and order of conviction passed by the Additional Sessions Judge-VIII, Fatehpur in the year 2018.

The accused was convicted under sections 376 IPC read with Section 3 (ii) (v)/ 3 (i) (xii) SC/ST Act and Section 5/6 POCSO Act and consequently sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment. Before his acquittal, he spent almost four years and two months of incarceration.

The case in brief

As per the prosecution’s case, on 9th September 2015, at about 4:30 a.m. in the morning, the informant's daughter (16-year-old victim) had gone behind the house to ease herself and that he when the accused Ajit Singh (a Constable posted in a local Police Station dragged the victim to the field by gagging her mouth and raped her.

Significantly, in her statement recorded under Section 161 CrPC, the victim did not make any allegations of rape against the accused and in fact, she said that she did not even recognize the accused.

However, in her Statement recorded under 164 CrPC, she made an improvement and stated that when she went to ease herself behind her house, she had a torch and in the light of the same, she recognized the accused-appellant Ajit Singh Sipahi, who caught hold of her from behind and gagged her mouth and dragged her to the paddy field and committed rape upon her.

Taking note of the inconsistency in her statements, the Court made the following observations:

“…upon a deeper evaluation of the statement of the victim recorded under Section 161 and 164 Cr.P.C. and the statement given before the court below, we find that there is improvement in the statements of the victim after her statement was recorded under Section 161 Cr.P.C. on the same day i.e. date of incident and such development or improvement in the statement of the victim amounts to major improvement, which renders the testimony of P.W.1/victim unreliable.”

In this regard, the HC also relied upon the Apex Court’s ruling in the case of Dola @ Dolagobinda Pradhan vs The State Of Odisha, wherein the top court had acquitted a rape accused after finding inconsistencies in the victim’s statements.

Further, the Court also took into account the fact that medical evidence did not support the prosecution’s case as the doctor who examined the victim did not find any injury on the body of the victim and she did not give an opinion related to sexual assault

The Court also made an observation that false implication of the accused in the present was also possible as the first informant was involved in a murder case and in connection with the same, the accused had reprimanded him and for that reason, the accused said, he was falsely implicated in the instant rape case.

Consequently, noting that the accused was clearly entitled to benefit of doubt, the Court acquitted him of rape charges.

Appearances

Counsel for Appellant: Rajesh Kumar Singh,Rajiv Lochan Shukla,Sr. Advocate,Tarun Kumar Srivastava

Counsel for Respondent: G.A.,Pavan Kumar Srivastava,R.B. Sahai,Sanjay Srivastava,Shailendra Kumar Dwivedi

Case title - Ajeet Singh Constable vs. State Of U.P. And Anr [CRIMINAL APPEAL No. - 7478 of 2018]

Case Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (AB) 4

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