Lucknow, Sep 11 (PTI) The Allahabad High Court has acquitted a man sentenced to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for allegedly abducting a minor, observing that the trial court had virtually assumed the role of an expert in determining her age, despite medical assessments putting it at around 18 years.
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi of the court’s Lucknow bench allowed the appeal filed by Bhaiya Lal Raidas and set aside the February 8, 2013, verdict of the Unnao additional sessions court, which had convicted the man under section 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage etc.) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced him to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment.
The high court said the trial court should not have substituted its own assessment of the victim’s age, based on her teeth and physical features, for the opinion of a doctor and a radiologist, who had assessed her age at around 18 years, according to the order made available on Friday.
The bench observed that the trial court had effectively preferred its own opinion over that of the medical experts.
It further noted that medical age assessment could have a margin of error of up to two years. Thus, the victim could have been as old as 20 at the time of her alleged abduction, the court said, holding that the prosecution had failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that she was a minor at the time of the incident.
The bench also found shortcomings in the prosecution evidence concerning the victim’s date of birth.
Her father had not mentioned her age in the FIR and stated during his testimony that he was not sure of her age or date of birth, the court noted.
The victim later referred to a Class-8 marksheet that allegedly recorded her date of birth as September 25, 1993. However, neither the original marksheet nor a copy was available in the trial court records and the document was not assigned an exhibit number.
The high court held that the trial court could not have relied on the date of birth recorded in the marksheet.
It also observed that a prosecution witness could not simply produce an additional document during examination, without following the prescribed procedure for bringing it on record. The convict must be given an opportunity to object and the document must duly be proved, it said.
In this case, neither the principal nor the headmaster of the school nor any other competent official was examined to prove the marksheet, the bench noted.
The high court also examined the victim’s statements at different stages of the proceedings.
In her statement before a magistrate, she had said she had gone with the convict of her own free will. She had stated that they wanted to marry each other and that she wanted to live with him. She had also refused to return to her parents, the court noted.
However, while deposing before the trial court, she alleged that the convict had rendered her unconscious by making her smell something and taken her to Ludhiana in Punjab.
The high court said a conviction could be based on the testimony of a sole prosecutrix, but such evidence had to be of a high degree of credibility and wholly reliable.
The bench noted that the victim had not denied her earlier statements made before the investigating officer and the magistrate. It also took note of the fact that she had lived with the convict in a rented house in Ludhiana for about seven months and not complained during that period that the he had used force against her. PTI COR KIS RC
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