New Delhi: “Child rape is inexcusable” and “no leniency or mercy can be shown” to the accused said the Delhi High Court upholding the conviction and life sentence awarded to an accused for raping a minor girl.
The Bench comprising of Justices S P Garg and C Hari Shankar held the accused sentence awarded by a trial court in March 2004, Indian Express reported.
The Justices observed that child rape was “an offence less of passion and more of power”.
The court said that while rape was an anathema, but since it was executed on a minor that shows the “depravity” and immorality ingrained in the psyche of the perpetrator, such evil persons do not deserve any leniency in law or the right to cohabit in society with others.
“Ecclesiastically as well as temporally, child rape is inexcusable. No leniency, or mercy, can be shown to the violator of the body of a child of tender years, who is yet to savour the first fragrance of adolescence. We find no reason, therefore, to interfere, far less differ, with the finding, of the Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ), that the appellant (Anil Mehto) was guilty of having committed rape on the prosecutrix and, subsequently, of having threatened her with dire consequences, in case she were to disclose the fact of commission of rape, on her, to anyone else,” the bench said.
Refusing to change the reduced the life sentence of the convict, the court said: “the perpetration of social order would necessarily require, therefore, the removal of such elements from the societal fabric, if the warp and weft thereof are to remain intact”.
The bench further added: “child rape was the ultimate indicator of the reality, often unnoticed, that rape is an offence less of passion and more of power”. “Rape, of any kind and on anyone, is an anathema in a civilised society; when perpetrated on a young child, however, it betokens a depravity, in the perpetrator, which is ingrained in his psyche, and which altogether disentitles him from any leniency, in law, or the right to cohabit, in society, with his brother.”
The incident occurs on 16 August 2000 where the convict – Mehto raped the minor girl while her siblings and father were sleeping.
The prosecution stated that the 10-year-old minor, in her testimony, said that the convict had first raped her inside her room and later took her to the roof of his house where he repeated his inhuman act and also again sexually assaulted her. The convict had also threatened to kill the victim.
The victim, however, on the very next day testified against the convict by informing some of her neighborhood women who informed the police.