POCSO Act wasn’t in force when 4 victims were sodomised: Defence

CHANDIGARH: In the sodomy case against Zulfiqar Khan, even as four victims, who are above 20 years of age, have stated to the police that they were sodomised when they were minors, none of them has claimed that he was subjected to sodomy on or after November 16, 2012, the day when the POCSO Act came into force.

Zulfiqar Khan

Aneesha Sareen

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 24

In the sodomy case against Zulfiqar Khan, even as four victims, who are above 20 years of age, have stated to the police that they were sodomised when they were minors, none of them has claimed that he was subjected to sodomy on or after November 16, 2012, the day when the POCSO Act came into force. This was suggested in a plea, placing additional facts before the court in the resumed hearing of the case today.

Pointing out lacunae in the police case and questioning the validity of the POCSO Act applied to the case of four of the five victims, the defence counsel in the case filed a supplementary application in the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge JS Sidhu today. The application was supplementary to the previous application moved in the court which had sought segregation of trial as only one of the five victims was a minor and that the case on the complaint of the remaining four be tried separately.

The police, in their reply, have opposed the application and stated that there is sufficient evidence against Zulfiqar Khan in the case. The police have prayed for dismissal of the application and appealed to the court to fast-track the case.

The court has deferred the case to December 1 when all applications moved by the defence counsel will be decided. It has been stated in the supplementary application that the case relates to one of the victims only who is a minor and the complainant in the case, Kanwar Pal, who is 21 years old, has himself started the “Education First” institute in order to "destroy" the NGO, Theatre Age, started by Zulfiqar.

Also, the minor victim has denied his presence in the photographs in which Zulfiqar is seen sodomosing the minor children.

“The investigating agency has joined hands with complainant Kanwar Pal and has falsely introduced four boys, all above 18 years of age, to pose them as victims of sodomy at the hands of accused Zulfiqar. Two of the boys have refused to be medically examined and nothing incriminating has come out on medical examination of the other two, who agreed to be medically examined,” states the plea.