Delhi High Court: The Division Bench of Sangita Dhingra Sehgal and Siddharth Mridul, JJ. dismissed a petition against trial court’s order acquitting the accused of offences punishable under Sections 363, 366, 376 and 506 IPC along with Section 5(1) and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
The accused was alleged to have forcefully made sexual relation with the prosecutrix. An FIR was filed under the above-said sections and the matter was committed to trial. After appreciating the entire evidence, the trial court acquitted the accused.
Ravi Nayak, Additional Public Prosecutor for the State assailed the order arguing that it was based on conjectures and surmises. Per contra, Rajeev Mohan, Advocate for accused supported the impugned order.
After perusing testimony of the prosecutrix in detail along with other evidence, the High Court found that it was full of inconsistencies, concealment, improvements and exaggerations which cast a shadow of doubt on the prosecution case. Furthermore, the case was not at all supported by the medical evidence and FSL report. It was held that the prosecution failed to establish the charges against the accused. Reliance was placed on Muralidhar v. State of Karnataka, (2014) 5 SCC 730 for the proposition that the Appellate Court may interfere in order of acquittal only when there are compelling reasons to do so. However, the present was not one of such cases. Therefore, the appeal filed by the State was dismissed. [State (NCT of Delhi) v. Manish, 2018 SCC OnLine Del 13291, Order dated 07-12-2018]
