The Thane’s  special Prevention of Children Against Sexual Offences (POCSO)Act court presided by judge D S Deshmukh has convicted a 27-year old man who had raped his eight year old niece in 2017, thereby sentencing him to 10 years of Rigorous Imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000. The court while sentencing the accused refused to grant him with any kind of leniency in quantum of punishment, stating that  as the crime committed by the accused demonstrated his mindset, thus he does-not deserve it. 

The case was revealed when the mother of the eight year old in the year 2020 was teaching her daughter with the  topic of Good Touch and Bad Touch, when the child disclosed it to her that she was ‘bad-touched’ by her mama, a year back and had threatened her with consequences. 

The judgement copy reads, “When the eight old was watching some adult scenes on her mobile phone, the mother reprimanded her,The victim then revealed that her mama was the one who had first shown her with such video on his phone and had misappropriated touched her. Investigations further revealed that the child was raped thrice by the accused in 2018.

After the mother came across the incident, she approached the police and filed the FIR in 2020. 

The accused however denied the incident, as there was a delay of more than a year in registering an FIR, which thus makes the prosecution’s case weak, however the court held that the strong evidence given by the victim was strong enough to prove the crime against the accused. 

The court held , that the victim understood of the offence only when she was explained by her mother in 2020 about good and bad touch. “If all these facts and relation of the accused with her is taken into consideration, it is but natural that she has not disclosed the incident immediately to her mother. It is to be noted that the girl, aged 8 years who is not developed enough mentally as well as physically to understand the meaning of the sexual act done by the accused with. Therefore, non-disclosure of the incident by her for the period of 1 ½ year is not fatal to the prosecution. Thus, the prosecution has satisfactorily explained the delay of that period,”held the court.