Ex-French diplomat accused of raping daughter acquitted

Bengaluru: A Bengaluru court on Wednesday acquitted former French diplomat Pascal Mazurier, who had been accused of raping his three and a half years old daughter.

According to a report in The Newsminute, a sessions court judge said that there were nor enough evidence to convict the 44-year-old ex-diplomat.

"The Honourble court has taken the evidence into consideration and given the judgment. The police has done a fantastic job," Mazurier’s lawyer said, following the judgment.

Mazurier, who was the deputy head of chancery at the French Consulate in Bangalore, was arrested on June 15 and an FIR was registered against him under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (punishment for rape) at the High Grounds police station.

The FIR was filed against Mazurier based on a complaint by his former wife Suja Jones.

On February 11, 2014, a sessions court in New Delhi had framed charges against Mazurier, after it earlier refused to discharge him on ground that there was sufficient evidence for him to face trial.

Police filed an additional charge sheet against Mazurier in January 2013, with a detailed report of doctors who said the accused sodomised and raped his daughter for two years.

In 2014, he had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention for expediting the trial in the case.

In a letter to Modi, Mazurier made an appeal to put the case on fast track as his grandmother was on death bed and wanted to see him.