Youth sent to jail for 4 years for attempt to rape in Delhi

New Delhi: A youth has been jailed for four years for trying to rape a four-year-old girl by a fast track court here which said discarding testimony of child victims on the ground that it was not detailed would be "disastrous" and allow culprits to "go scot-free".

The special fast track court, set up to try exclusively cases of sexual offences against women, sent 24-year-old Mohan, a rickshaw puller, for attempting to rape the minor neighbour and said his act depicted extreme kind of depravity. The court rejected the plea of Mohan that he was falsely implicated by the child`s family as they had a quarrel with him few days ago and the parents had tutored the minor. "It will be disastrous if such rigid approach is adopted by the courts in cases concerning child victims. In case the testimony of a child victim is thrown out on this ground that the child did not say specifically in detail what was she subjected to, every accused would go scot-free after raping or attempting to rape a child," Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Virender Bhat said while dismissing the plea of the accused that the deposition of the child was vague and meaningless. According to the prosecution, Mohan and the child were tenants in the same building and he had called her to his room and tried to rape her in Najafgarh area here in November 2011. The child had told about the incident to her mother who approached the police and a case was registered against Mohan. "In my opinion, it is almost impossible to tutor a minor child of four years age to give a false evidence regarding sexual assault. In the first place, the minor child would not understand at all what she is being tutored, even if the tutor is her mother or father. "Secondly, it is very difficult to imagine or conceive that the parents would expose their minor child to sexual act at such tender age by tutoring her to give a false evidence with respect to sexual assault," the judge said. PTI