MP: Juvenile accused in rape cases treated too leniently by law

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh high court has observed that the law in India treats juveniles accused of rape too leniently and no lessons have been learnt even though more than a decade has passed since the horrific Nirbhaya gang rape incident.

“Juveniles in this country are being treated rather too leniently, and that the Legislature, to the utter misfortune of the victims of such crimes, has still not learnt any lessons from the horrors of Nirbhaya”, the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court said while upholding the conviction of a juvenile for the rape of a four-year-old girl.

Although the judgment was pronounced in the case by the single bench court headed by Justice Subodh Abhyankar on Wednesday, the copy of the verdict was available on Saturday.

Recalling that the constitutional courts in the country have time and again favoured strongly for stricter laws against the juvenile-accused, the court lamented that the legislature has not so far taken any initiative in this regard.

The case relates to rape of a four-year-old girl by a juvenile, son of the landlord, in December 2017.

The accused had gone to the house of the tenant and raped the minor girl.

Her mother rushed to the spot when she heard the cry of her daughter and found her unconscious on the bed.

She also found the accused standing beside the victim. The accused later fled the spot.

The mother noticed that her daughter was bleeding from her private parts.

The trial court convicted the juvenile under the relevant sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Protection of Children from Sexual Act, 2012 (POCSO) and sentenced him to ten years of rigorous imprisonment.

He has however been on the run from the observation home since November 2019 and is still untraceable.

The father of the juvenile later moved the high court challenging the verdict of the trial court in the case.

The high court further observed that “Looking at the overwhelming medical evidence available in the present case, it does not take an expert to see as to how demonic the appellant’s (the juvenile’s) conduct was while he was juvenile, and his mindset can also be gathered from the fact that he has also absconded from the observation home, and presently is at large, probably lurking in some corner of the street, for yet another prey, and there is nobody to stop him”.