New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has upheld the conviction of and life
sentence awarded to a man for raping a minor girl, saying "child rape is
inexcusable" and "no leniency or mercy can be shown" to one who commits
such a crime.
While upholding the March 2004 decision of a trial court to sentence
the man to imprisonment for life, a bench of Justices S P Garg and C
Hari Shankar observed that child rape was "an offence less of passion
and more of power".
The court said that while rape was an anathema, but when it was
perpetrated on a minor, it showed the "depravity" ingrained in the
psyche of the perpetrator and such persons did 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.
The court refused to interfere with the life sentence awarded to the
convict, saying "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 said that "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," it added.
According to the prosecution, the incident occurred on the night of
August 16, 2000, when Mehto raped the minor girl while her siblings and
father were sleeping.
The then 10-year-old girl in her testimony had said that the convict
first raped her inside her room and then took her to the roof of his
house where he again sexually assaulted her.
Thereafter, he had threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the incident, the girl had testified.
However, on the next day she had told some women of her neighbourhood who had then called the police.
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