Mumbai: The special PCOSO court has recently sentenced a 51-year-old man to imprisonment for the entire life for sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl residing in his neighborhood, seven times within a month of August 2015. The court held the man guilty on the basis of the testimony of the victim girl who now wants to be a police officer.

While holding the man guilty of raping the minor girl, the special POCSO judge Sameer Jahan Ansari, admired victim girl’s resilience and asked the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) to adequately compensate the girl.

“it is not difficult to imagine the pain and trauma of which the victim girl would have undergone when the offences were being committed. The mere fact that she showed herself to be a child having a resilient nature, cannot automatically lead to it being concluded that she will not need rehabilitation,” the court said.

Meanwhile, the girl wants to be a police officer. As per the procedure the court had before recording her formal testimony, attempted to make the atmosphere of the courtroom more comfortable for the victim girl who was just 15 years at the time of recording the evidence.

Also the court also needs to evaluate if the girl is in the condition to respond properly to any questions asked to her. During this period the court would ask her several questions about her likes – dislikes, ambitions, her activities etc. During this conversation the girl had revealed that after growing up she would like to be a ‘police woman.’

On the other hand, while awarding maximum punishment of life imprisonment to the accused observed that, “the aggravating circumstances, that is the heinous crime committed by him not once, but repeatedly against a helpless eight year old child who was his neighbour, who used to call the accused an ‘uncle’ in spite of which he had abused the said trust, as also the fact of the victim having obviously undergone extreme pain and trauma leading to she being scarred for the whole of her life, will outweigh the mitigating circumstances

As per the prosecution case registered with Bangur Nagar police station, on August 16, 2015, at about 7:45 pm, the victim girl, who was seven years at that time, had gone for a walk in the garden with her mother. That’s where she saw the accused who by gesture called her near him. In response, the girl also showed him her right hand showing a gesture of slapping him. Unaware of anything, the mother scolded her for such behavior.

The girl however, revealed everything that the accused subjected her to sexual assault multiple times and threatened to beat her with stick. The mother later narrated this to her husband. The family, later with the help of an NGO, got the case registered against the accused.

The girl had in her testimony revealed that the accused would often ask her to get household things and in return would give her Rs 2 or Rs 5. The girl however, claimed that since a month before the incident, the accused would pull her inside the house and rape her. Whenever the girl tried to shout, the accused would press her mouth and also threaten to beat her with the stick he had at his house. The girl claimed that the accused did this on seven occasions.

The court believed in her testimony which was supported by the medical evidence and held the man guilty of sexual assault.