Mumbai: While hearing a minor’s sexual assault case, the Bombay high court has observed that such accused should be “mercilessly and inexorably punished”. The court in its order upheld the conviction of a 29-year-old man for molesting a five-year-old girl.
A single bench of Justice Prithviraj Chavan was hearing an appeal filed by Sagar Dhuri alias Baburao, challenging a Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court order of June 2018 convicting him for sexually assaulting the victim and sentencing him to ten years in jail.
Justice Chavan in his judgement observed that there is no question of reformation of the appellant as he was quite a grown up male who knew the consequences of his act. “The dicta is loud and clear as to how such offences are required to be dealt with. Such persons are menace to the civilised society and, therefore, they should be mercilessly and inexorably punished,” observed the judge.
The court noted that the victim used to call the appellant as Dada (elder brother), which makes it clear that she had full faith and respect towards him. “The appellant betrayed her trust by molesting her,” the court said adding that the appellant was about to commit aggravated penetrative sexual assault upon the victim but due to intervention of a neighbour could not succeed in his nefarious design.
The prosecution case is that Dhuri, who used to live in the same neighbourhood as the victim in Thane district, called the girl to his house in April 2015 under the pretext of showing her songs on his mobile phone and sexually assaulted her.
The victim’s friend, who was looking for her to play with, found her in the convict’s house and informed a woman residing in the neighbourhood. The woman peeped through a hole on the convict’s door and found the girl lying down and the convict on top of her following which she called the victim out and took her to her mother and narrated the incident.
A police complaint was then lodged and the accused was taken into custody. The Bombay high court, while upholding Dhuri’s conviction and sentence, relied on the statements of witnesses and also the evidence provided by the victim.
