New Delhi: A sessions court has upheld the
conviction and the entailing three-year jail term to a
religious teacher for sodomising a seven-year-old child in a
mosque, saying he had betrayed the minor and the society.
"The act of Mohd Mahmood, who is a teacher, is the
breach of trust of highest order against the child, his
parents and society at large," Additional Sessions Judge
Santosh Snehi Mann said while upholding a magisterial court
order convicting Mahmood.
"Appellant (Mohd Mahmood) in this case is guilty of
sexually abusing a seven years old child who was sent to him
by the family for religious teaching," the court said denying
any leniency to him for sodomising the child in mosque in
2006.
The session court's judgement came on an appeal by
Mahmood, who had challenged the magisterial court's order,
which had also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him.
Judge Mann denied any leniency to the convict saying,
"Any leniency shown by the court in sentencing Mahmood would
dilute the credibility of the system in the eyes of the
society."
Mahmood was convicted by the magistrate for sexually
abusing the child on May 29, 2006 inside a mosque at Turkman
gate locality here.
The child had told the court that he had gone to the
mosque for religious learning and his teacher Mahmood had
detained him after the class on pretext of making him learn
the lesson.
Mahmood took him to a room within the premises of the
mosque and sodomised him, the child had said.
Mahmood, however, refuted the charges and said he was
implicated in this case by two policemen, who intercepted him
after knowing that he was a resident of West Bengal.
The ASJ, meanwhile, said that testimony of the child was
sufficient to nail the convict.
"A seven-year-old child is too innocent to cook up story
to falsely implicate an adult, that too with allegations of
sexual assault, the nature of which would go beyond the
comprehension of the child of that age," the judge said while
dismissing Mahmood's assertions.
The court trashed Mahmood's contentions that no public
person was joined in the investigation despite the fact that
the area being thickly crowded.
"This argument is totally frivolous in the facts and
circumstances of the case as the incident took place in the
closed confines of a mosque in a room, which was not witnessed
by anybody," the court said.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, December 22, 2010, 19:06