Justice not delayed: Judge sends sexual harasser father to jail in 6 days

Kolkata: In a nation where delayed justice is almost the norm, a Kolkata court judge has set an example by dealing with a case of sexual assault within six working days.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, Jimutbahan Biswas, the additional district and sessions judge of the city court in Sealdah, sentenced a man to five years in jail and charged a fine of Rs 20,000 for sexually assaulting his teenage daughter. If unable to pay the fine, the convict has to spend three months extra in prison.

The accused, whose wife died four months back, was charged under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).  

“This is the fastest judgement in any POCSO case in India. It proves that if the police can file the chargesheet promptly and the matter can be followed up with equal speed, justice cannot be delayed,” public prosecutor Vivek Sharma was reported as saying.

As many as 11 witnesses were ousted in this Sealdah court case.

The 13-yr-old victim’s maternal grandfather lodged a complaint with the police on March 11. In a few hours’ time, the accused was arrested.

After her mother’s death, the girl was living with her father and younger brother in Kolkata’s Entally area. On the night of February 20, the girl’s father began caressing her private parts. On being resisted, she was threatened to be killed and warned against disclosing it to anyone, the HT reported from the police complaint.   

Later, the victim narrated the incident to her maternal grandmother and refused to return home.

Setting a similar kind of record in 2016, the same judge, who was then posted in West Bengal’s Nadia district, had sent a barber to five years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor, in 15 days after the crime.