MUMBAI: A special Pocso court cited doctor’s statement and the delay in filing of the FIR while acquiting a 35-year-old man, who spent 12 years in jail, of gang-rape of a minor girl. The judge said, “In the absence of examination of the issuing authority, to my mind, it cannot be firmly said that the date of birth of the victim girl is March 4, 2003 as medical report indicates her date of birth as May 4, 1993.” Further, medical evidence also failed to support the prosecution’s claims of repeated penetrative assault. A doctor who examined the girl deposed about a ruptured hymen and said that such a condition could result from non-sexual activities and that it was impossible to determine when or how the rupture occurred. Special judge N D Khose remarked that “only rupture of hymen cannot be the sole criterion to opine about the sexual intercourse,” especially since no other physical injuries or forensic links were found. The judge also took a dim view of the two-day delay in filing the police report, which remained unexplained throughout the trial. “If there is an inordinate, unexplained delay in registration of FIR, there is every scope to draw inference that the same FIR might have been registered as an afterthought,” the judge said. The court further noted that the mother of the victim admitted neighbours had advised her to lodge the complaint, raising questions about the spontaneity of the report. The judge said the “prosecution has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, before one month of Nov 2, 2014, at different dates and at different times, the accused, along with the co-accused, committed rape on the victim”. The prosecution’s case was centred on allegations that the girl was repeatedly assaulted over a month at a residence in Dahisar East. According to the mother’s complaint, the girl began complaining of abdominal pain in late 2014, which was initially ignored. The matter escalated on Oct 31, 2014, when the mother returned home to find the girl missing and eventually discovered her at the house of the accused. The victim later alleged that the accused, along with another man and a minor boy, had shown her obscene videos on a mobile phone and established physical relations through threats of violence.
