Court of Appeal of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka: A Division Bench of K.K. Wickremasinghe and K. Priyantha Fernando, JJ., dismissed an appeal filed to set aside the judgment of the High Court.
The prosecutrix had testified that, the incidents had taken place about two years prior to testifying when she was in Grade 8 and the appellant had abused her for 5-6 times. The prosecutrix had narrated these incidents to her mother who took her to the police station and as per the prosecution evidence, the incident had taken place three months prior to making the police complaint. The JMO had testified that no injuries were found but the possibility of sexual abuse cannot be excluded as per the short history was given by the prosecutrix. The appellant had denied committing the offence and contended that he was being falsely implicated by his wife as he had caught her with her paramour. He further submitted that his wife lodged a complaint at the police station asking for the custody of the children and he had denied the same after which the wife had challenged him that she would send him to the prison and would take the custody of the children.
The counsel for the appellant AAL K. Kugaraja contended that the prosecution had failed to establish the date of offence to which the counsel for the respondent Sudarshana De Silva, submitted that the prosecutrix had clearly stated that the incident took place in the latter part of 2007. The accused-appellant had been indicted under three charges for committing Grave sexual abuse on his daughter, an offence punishable under Section 365B (2) (b) of the Penal Code, 1860 as amended. The Trial Court had convicted the accused-appellant and had sentenced him to 18 years of rigorous imprisonment along with fines aggrieved by which this appeal was filed.
The Court while dismissing the appeal explained that the Judgment of the High Court was well reasoned as when the victim is a small child and is abused by someone who is associated to him/her on a daily basis its nearly impossible to specify the exact same date of offence and also the evidence of the prosecution was corroborated by other witnesses as well and the High Court was satisfied with the trustworthiness of the evidence so there was no reason to disturb the findings of the trial court.[Kurundukara Hakuruge Ariyadasa v. Attorney General, C.A. Case No: HCC-0384 of 2017, decided on 05-12-2019]
