Mumbai: The special POCSO court has sentenced a 50-year-old man to ten years imprisonment for sexually assaulting and repeatedly raping his daughter for almost one and a half years since January 2015. Tired of continuous humiliation and harassment, the girl one day escaped and approached the police in August 2016.
The Additional Sessions Judge, Nandkishor More, while sentencing the man to maximum imprisonment as per the provisions of POCSO, before it was amended, observed, “Looking to the act of accused, it is proved that, he by taking undue advantage of helpless girl raped her. In the Indian society, hidden behind rape is the idea that women are property. In the act of rape, a woman is treated as an object to be possessed, a medium through which the men exert their masculinity, their superiority and their dominance.”
The defence had pleaded that the man was falsely implicated as he was insisting on the marriage of the victim since she had attained a marriageable age but she wanted to stay with her mother. Besides, the defence claimed that the girl never resisted the act of the accused but persuaded him.
The court rejected the arguments observing, “No girl of self-respect and dignity who is conscious of her chastity having expectations of married life and livelihood would accuse falsely against any other person of rape, much less against her father, sacrificing thereby her chastity and also expose the entire family to shame and at the risk of condemnation and ostracisation by the society.”
“It is unthinkable to suggest that the mother would go to the extent of inventing a story of sexual assault of her daughter and tutor her to narrate a story of sexual assault against a person who is no other than her husband and father of the girl, at the risk of bringing down their social status and spoil their reputation in the society as well as family circle,” the judge added.
As per the complaint, lodged with the Kurar police by the girl, the accused – her father is a carpenter while her mother does imitation jewellery work. In January 2015, when the victim’s mother had gone to bring imitation jewellery material and her siblings were in the school, at about 5pm, the accused sexually assaulted her and threatened her not to disclose the incident to anyone.
The next day, the victim narrated the incident to her mother, thereafter the accused assaulted and abused both of them and threatened them with dire consequences. The girl was frequently assaulted in absence of her mother and siblings.
Later, on August 25, 2016, the victim returned home after Janmashtami pooja and was abused again. The next day, the girl, disturbed by continuous harassment by the accused, approached the police and got the case registered.
