PUNE: A 52-year-old daily wage worker from Baramati was arrested on Tuesday for sexually harassing his neighbour’s daughter (10) the previous day, about eight-and-a-half years after the Bombay high court acquitted him in a rape case.The man was in jail for eight years after the Baramati sessions court on April 6, 2011, convicted him for raping a minor in Nov 2009. The high court in Aug 2017 acquitted the man.Inspector Shrishail Chiwadshetti of the Baramati city police on Wednesday said, “We arrested the suspect and registered a case for offences under sections 74 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 75 (sexual harassment) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and relevant sections of Protection of Children from the Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act”.The man lured the minor to his house under the guise of giving her a chocolate and sexually assaulted her, the police said. The girl’s mother lodged a complaint soon after the minor narrated the incident to her.“Our investigation so far has revealed that the man molested one more girl recently,” inspector Chiwadshetti said.The officer said the complainant and the suspect had been neighbours and known each other quite well. “On Monday, the girl was playing in front of her house when the accused offered her a chocolate and took her inside his house. The girl raised an alarm when he inappropriately touched her. The suspect sensed trouble and let her go, but not before threatening that he would kill her if she disclosed the incident to anyone,” Chiwadshetti said, citing the complaint.In the 2009 rape case, the police said, a Baramati sessions court had convicted and sentenced the same person on April 6, 2011, to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a 13-year-old girl on the pretext of dropping her home from school.The court then pronounced two concurrent sentences of seven and five years, respectively, for kidnapping and kidnapping a girl under the age of 16 years. It also added, concurrently, two years for criminal intimidation and five years for an offence under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.In an appeal proceeding, the Bombay high court on Aug 7, 2017, quashed and set aside the Baramati sessions court conviction. The court held that the rape survivor’s deposition, taken as a whole, did not inspire confidence and was not corroborated by medical or any other evidence. As such, the accused could not be convicted on the sole testimony of the survivor, the high court held.Inspector Chiwadshetti said, “The suspect had served about eight years in jail before being released following the high court order. Since then, he has been working as a daily wage worker. He is now lodged in jail following a judicial custody order of a local court.”(The victim’s identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
