New Delhi: On 17 July 2018, a three-year-old girl was brought to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital by her adoptive mother with injuries and continuous bleeding from her private parts. Suspecting it was a case of sexual assault, the doctor on duty alerted NGOs and the Child Welfare Committee.
The woman claimed that the child had injured herself while playing. However, she went on to become the main suspect in the case and was accused of penetrative sexual assault.
An inquiry was initiated against the woman by the police, but an FIR was registered four years after the incident. Not much, however, was established then during the investigation.
The adoptive mother was named as the accused in the chargesheet for the alleged sexual assault of the minor, but she insisted in court that there was no evidence of “sexual intent”.
Earlier this month, the Delhi High Court refused to quash the charges against her, saying that even a woman can be charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for penetrative sexual assault.
Seeking discharge, defence counsel Piyush Sachdev had argued that “based on the material collected during investigation, the chargesheet itself records that no intent of sexual assault can be attributed to the petitioner”.
This, the accused had contended, was an observation in the chargesheet based on the police investigation, and in particular, the statement of the woman’s six-year-old son, and the opinion of the doctor who had examined the injuries on the girl’s body.
The defence had also said that the “offence of penetrative sexual assault‟ and “aggravated penetrative sexual assault‟ can simply not be made out against a woman”. The FIR lodged in the case, four years after the alleged crime, was based on the discharge report of the child prepared by the doctor.
ThePrint revisits the case, what the police found in their investigation, and the current status.
What happened
The child’s biological parents had handed her over to the woman (accused) in 2015, when she was five months old. She referred to the accused as her mother.
“The parents were living separately and had a disturbed relationship. The accused woman was a distant relative. All of them are from Nepal. She is a housewife and her husband is a driver. At that time, they had a biological son,” a Delhi police officer told ThePrint.
According to the police, the accused’s six-year-old son was present in the house at the time of the alleged incident. His statement is part of the police’s probe into the matter.
Sources in the Delhi Police said that the adoptive mother had claimed that the child injured herself while playing on a table with nails, and that she took the child to the hospital a day after the incident when her bleeding did not stop.
“The chargesheet contains medical evidence, the child’s statement as well as the woman’s son’s statement. The second doctor’s opinion is also part of the chargesheet,” the source said.
Four-year delay in FIR
According to the Delhi High Court’s order passed on 9 August this year, on 1 August 2018, 14 days after the child was brought to the hospital, the CWC’s Kalkaji unit had asked the Govindpuri police station house officer (SHO) to take legal action under the POCSO Act.
A former CWC chairperson called this an “inordinate delay”.
“In POCSO cases, the process has to be initiated immediately, and the action has to be fast. There seems to be an inordinate delay of 14 days here. Children take time to open up, especially considering the age of the victim at the time of the offence. Counselling and evaluations could take a little time, but inspite of this, the police have to be informed immediately,” the former chairperson told ThePrint.
According to police sources, in her testimony to the counsellor, which was recorded on 7 September 2018, the child said that her mother caused her injuries, which they said were suggestive of sexual assault.
“The woman was questioned and the matter was being investigated,” a police source said.
The matter was transferred from the CWC to the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) on 28 August the following year. On 4 September, 2019, the JJB directed the then Govindpuri SHO to lodge an FIR, according to the Delhi HC order.
The former CWC chairperson quoted earlier also said that there was an excessive delay in the transfer from CWC to JJB, which should have ideally been expedited.
In September 2019, after the JJB took over and issued directions for an FIR, the then SHO of Govindpuri police station filed a status report on the investigation that comprised the woman’s son’s statement and the opinion of the doctor who had examined the girl, who had said that “no intent of sexual assault” could be attributed to the accused.
The FIR was finally lodged on 15 October 2022 — nearly four years after the alleged crime had taken place — against the adoptive mother under Section 376 (rape) of the IPC and Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.
“The FIR was lodged based on the discharge report of the child prepared by the doctor who had treated her for the injuries,” the Delhi police officer quoted above said.
During this time period, the child was placed under the care of the CWC and an NGO, and was handed over to the biological parents on 21 October 2020.
Meanwhile, the accused woman gave birth to a daughter. After the FIR was lodged, she was arrested and spent around five months in jail, until she was granted interim bail, owing to her biological daughter’s illness.
A chargesheet was filed in the case on 10 February last year under only Section 6 of the POCSO Act (aggravated penetrative sexual assault).
The chargesheet relies on the subsequent medical opinion obtained by the investigating officer, according to which the “possibility of penetrative sexual assault cannot be ruled out”. The additional public prosecutor submitted in court that the medical evidence corroborated the child’s testimony to the counsellor after the incident.
The POCSO court framed charges against the woman in January this year. The additional sessions judge, while ordering the framing of the charges, asked the concerned deputy commissioner of police to submit a report, seeking an explanation from police personnel responsible for the delay.
ThePrint reached DCP (South East) Rajesh Deo and Additional DCP Harsh Indora for comment via calls and messages. This report will be updated if and when they respond.
What court said
“On a prima facie consideration of the material placed on record along with the chargesheet, in the opinion of this court, the offence of ‘aggravated penetrative sexual assault’ is made out against the petitioner, even though she is a woman; and the petitioner is, therefore, required to be put to trial for the offences as charged,” the Delhi HC said earlier this month, refusing to discharge the accused.
The defence had filed a criminal revision petition in the high court in July this year seeking that the charges against the woman be quashed. Further, the delay in the FIR is one of the primary reasons, the woman’s counsel told ThePrint, behind the petition.
Advocate Sachdev told ThePrint, “The FIR was lodged after an unexplained delay. The woman was arrested out of nowhere in 2022 after more than three years of the incident.”
The court, however, noted that the narration in the chargesheet based on the doctor’s opinion and the woman’s son’s statement is “irrelevant for discharging the petitioner”, quoting Section 29 of the POCSO Act, according to which the special court trying the case works on the presumption that the suspect is guilty.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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