UP court awards 25 yrs’ jail to man for sexual assault on 7yo boy

Agra: A court in Uttar Pradesh's Etah district has awarded 25 years of rigorous imprisonment to a 35-year-old man for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy in 2023. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 80,000 on the convict, failure to pay would result in an additional one-year imprisonment.ADGC Pradeep Gupta said the incident occurred on April 11, 2023, when the child's mother went to the fields to collect cow dung. The man approached the child sitting on the doorstep and took him inside the house and assaulted him sexually. "The man was a bus conductor and the child used to go to school in his vehicle," the ADGC said.The boy's mother filed a complaint, following which an FIR was registered at a police station in Etah under Section 377 (unnatural sex) and relevant sections of Pocso Act. The man was arrested two days later.During trial, the man rejected the allegations and demanded a fair trial. In his defence, the man said that "a few days before the ‘so-called incident', the child fell from the bus and the case was filed in rage." The case was heard by special judge Sarika Goyal. After examining the evidence on record, the court found the man guilty and pronounced the sentence on Thursday.