The Madhya Pradesh high court has expunged the words “kind enough to leave the prosecutrix (girl) alive” and modified the order of reducing punishment of a rape culprit from life imprisonment to 20 years in jail by saying that certain inadvertent mistake had crept in the judgment.
In a new order given on October 27, a division bench of justices Subodh Abhyankar and Satyendra Kumar Singh said, “It is brought to the notice of this court that certain inadvertent mistake has crept in the judgment delivered by this court on October 18 where in the word kind has been used to refer to appellant who stands convicted of rape.”
On October 18, the court said “The court does not find any error in appreciation of evidence by the trail court and considering the demonic act of the appellant who appears to have no respect for the dignity of a woman and has the propensity to commit sexual offence even with a girl child aged 4 years, this Court does not find it to be a fit case where the sentence can be reduced to the sentence already undergone by him, however, considering the fact that he was kind enough to leave the prosecutrix (girl) alive, this court is of the opinion that the life imprisonment can be reduced to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment.”
The criminal appeal is partly allowed and the appellant be made to suffer the period of 20 years in accordance with law, said the order.
The court said on October 27 that it is apparent that the aforesaid mistake is obviously inadvertent in the context, as this court has already held the act of the appellant as demonic. In such circumstance, while excersing our powers as conferred under Section 362 of CrPC, the aforesaid paragraph is modified and replaced as under.
“However, considering the fact that he didn’t cause any other physical injury to the victim, this court is of the opinion that the life imprisonment can be reduced to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment,” the order said in the modified judgment.
However, the father of the rape survivor, who is unable to challenge the verdict, said, “Only my family and my daughter know how much we faced. She faced both physical and mental trauma for years and it will continue till death but the culprit will get rid of it in the next five years as he already spent 15 years in jail.”
“I appealed to the government to move to the Supreme Court against this judgment and ensure capital punishment for the heinous act with my four-year-old daughter,” he added.
A resident of Dabra town of Gwalior district, Ram Singh, 45, raped the four-year-old girl in Indore in 2007 and the session court sentenced a punishment of life imprisonment to him in 2009. He appealed before the court that he has been falsely implicated in the case as barring eyewitnesses there is no cogent evidence available on record to connect him with the offence as even the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) report is not brought on record in support of the case of the prosecution.
