New Delhi: Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court has reduced the life sentence awarded to a convict in a rape case to 20 years rigorous imprisonment after it noted that the convict was “kind enough” to leave the four-year-old victim alive.
A bench comprising Justices Subodh Abhyankar and Satyendra Kumar Singh observed: “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 alive, this court is of the opinion that the life imprisonment can be reduced to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment,” the court said.
The bench was hearing an appeal filed by one Ramu alias Ram Singh, who was found guilty by an additional sessions judge in Indore in April 2009. He was awarded life imprisonment under Section 376(2)(f) (punishment for raping a woman under 12 years old) of the Indian Penal Code.
The incident had occurred in Indore where the victim’s family worked. Ramu lived in a tent near the family and sold medicines and herbs for a living. The prosecution had alleged that in May 2007, after the survivor followed her grandmother out of the family hut, Singh called her into his tent on the pretext of giving her a rupee and raped her.
The girl was hospitalised for six days, and the doctor who treated her confirmed that the injuries suffered by her were caused by rape.
The remark has raised furore online, with readers calling the remark “unbelievable”. A Supreme Court lawyer called the observation “absolutely shocking and bizarre”. Another Twitter user wrote, “So our courts expect culprits to rape & kill victims! The observation itself is a CRUEL act!”
Meanwhile, experts were divided over it.
Senior advocate K.T.S Tulsi told ThePrint that “courts can’t use such kind of language that they are grateful that he did not kill the girl”.
“They have to give reasons why a person has not been given the maximum sentence…If the punishment is not awarded, then there is a contradiction,” he said. “If the court rules that the offence is proved, then the sentence must follow. But to say that we are grateful that they didn’t kill the girl, there is no gratitude involved in this. The victim will have to live for the rest of her life with the stigma of the crime committed against her.”
Senior advocate Geeta Luthra agreed that the language used by the judges “is not as sensitive as it could have been”. However, she said that “the observations of the court, cannot be measured with so much exactitude as to become a media trial of what a court has done, as long as it is within the parameters of what is the law — that is, in this case, rigorous imprisonment for 20 years”.
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‘Gross negligence by the police’
Before the high court, Ramu had claimed that he had been falsely implicated and that the prosecution had not submitted even a forensic report. He also told the court that he had already spent around 15 years in jail and that his sentence should be reduced to the period already undergone.
The court noted that the vaginal smear of the victim was sent to a forensic laboratory but its report was not available on record. This, it asserted, “shows the gross negligence on the part of the police in prosecuting such heinous offenses”. However, the court said that the mere absence of a Forensic Science Laboratory report wouldn’t help the convict since the medical evidence and eyewitness account proved Singh’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The judgment noted that the victim was brought to the court for her deposition but could not understand the questions put to her and began crying. Therefore, she was allowed to go without submitting her statement to the court. However, the court confirmed Ramu’s conviction on the basis of the eyewitness account of her father and her grandmother who had found the bleeding girl in Ramu’s tent.
Senior advocate Tulsi, quoted earlier, said that the court’s language could have a detrimental effect.
“This is not how you are going to be able to reduce crime. There has to be a deterrent impact of the punishment that is awarded, to send a message to others, that if you indulge in such a crime, you are not going to be spared…Offences [that are] proved in a court of law, they are not amenable to any bargains,” he told ThePrint.
Luthra, however, disagreed. She said that while the expression used by the court should have been more sensitive, “but the ethos was to keep the term as a rigorous imprisonment of 20 years, which is a stringent punishment, in consonance with the seriousness or gravity of the offence”.
“The person had already done 15 years, and it would be expected that the defence counsel would ask for a reduction of the period in terms of the period already undergone, Luthra said.
“A healthy critique of legal issues has to be appreciated but we cannot weigh the expression of a court with so much exactitude, even if it is in a language which may not be an expression of the sentiment of the public,” she added.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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