Justice Sadhna Jadhav also rejected claims that the survivor had been raped earlier and sentenced Rakesh Patel, 27, to eight years in prison. "The court cannot be oblivious of the fact that a victim in a rape case is not only an injured witness, who has suffered physical injury but the injury is a psychological injury. The injury is caused to the soul of the woman," said the judge.
Justice Jadhav gave the verdict relying on Supreme Court judgments that a rape survivor's statement was enough to nail an accused in the absence of medical evidence and loss of virginity earlier did not give others a "licence" to rape her.
The defence's claim that the accused had been implicated at the instance of another man, too, was dismissed by the judge, who said it was hard to believe that the survivor's mother would at someone's instance "expose the very womanhood of her minor daughter".
Additional public prosecutor Swapnil Pednekar said the girl had identified the accused as the man who had raped her.
The survivor lives with her parents in Bandra (east). On the night of March 27, 2009, the girl's mother went to fetch her husband who was watching television in another person's room. When she returned, she found Patel raping her daughter. Hearing her scream, Patel fled but was later caught.
During hearings in the trial court, the survivor said she had earlier been raped by her father's associates. Patel, too, was known to her father. The court held Patel guilty, a verdict the high court upheld.
The court reiterated earlier judgments that said medical evidence was corroborative evidence and even if there were no injuries, the rape survivor's statement alone was sufficient to prove the guilt of an accused.
No comments:
Post a Comment