Stringent punishments for sexual offences no deterrent: High Court

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, June 3

The Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) has ruled that stringent punishments for sexual offences have failed to act as a deterrent. “Sexual abuse of children is alarming and there is no respite, although the legislature has provided stringent punishments for sexual offences,” a Division Bench asserted, as it upheld a Faridabad Court’s order convicting and sentencing a man to life imprisonment for raping his minor daughter.

Victims reluctant to seek police help

Reluctance to go to the police is because of society’s attitude. It casts doubt and shame upon woman rather than comfort and sympathise with her. —Bench, Punjab and Haryana High Court

The Bench of Justice Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Justice Lalit Batra also asserted that the perpetrators of sexual offences on innocent children were “psycho-social deviants” and could not lay any claim to leniency.

The ruling by came on an appeal by the convict challenging the judgment of conviction and order on the quantum of sentence by Faridabad Additional Sessions Judge in May 2013. The case has its genesis in an FIR registered in October 2012 for rape and another offence under Sections 323 and 376, IPC, at Surajkund police station in Faridabad district.

The Bench, during the course of hearing, was told that the 14-year-old victim had lodged a complaint against her father, accusing him of regularly sexually assaulting her since she was seven. Dismissing the appeal, the Bench asserted inference about the complaint being false could not be drawn merely because it was lodged less than promptly.

Reluctance to go to the police was there because of society’s attitude towards women. Doubt and shame were cast upon her, rather than comfort and sympathy. As such, delay in lodging complaints in such cases did not necessarily indicate falsehood of the version.

The Bench added that the prosecutrix was subjected to sexual molestation during her tender age. Her father’s misdeeds continued when she grew up. She made courageous effort to seek legal course for his wrongful act. In this scenario, delay if any in reporting the matter to the police paled into insignificance.

Speaking for the Bench, Justice Batra observed: “It is in the order of nature and is the sacred right of every living being to blossom from infancy to childhood, to adolescence and finally to adulthood. This order of nature was thrown into violent disarray by sexual predators of children. The innocence of the prosecutrix, who had barely savoured the first fragrance of childhood, let alone adolescence, was brutally plundered by the appellant, the deviancy of his act being augmented by the fact that he chose to sodomise her”.

Before parting with the case, the Bench added her trauma was bound to be life-long. As such, the court was required to adopt “corrective machinery or deterrence based on factual matrix” while operating the sentencing system.