Ghaziabad teacher gets 3 yrs’ jail for sodomising Class X student

Ghaziabad: A special Pocso court sentenced a computer teacher to three years of rigorous imprisonment for sodomising a Class 10 student 10 years ago. The court convicted him under sections 7/8 of Pocso Act and 323 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and imposed a fine of Rs 11,000.A day after the boy was sexually assaulted, he filed a complaint at the Tronica City police station on Jan 19, 2016. Police registered an FIR under Indian Penal Code sections 377 (carnal intercourse against the order of nature), 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) and 323 (voluntarily causing simple hurt), along with section 7/8 of the Pocso Act. Police filed a charge sheet on March 13, 2016, and the court framed charges on July 18.
The teacher denied the charges during the trial. The prosecution presented six witnesses, including the boy, his father and investigators. The defence produced two witnesses.The minor told the court that at the time of the assault, he had completed Class 9 and had started attending computer tuitions. On the day of the incident, he had gone to get a printout of his Aadhar card when the tutor touched him inappropriately, forced the boy to touch his private parts and tried to sodomise him. When the boy resisted, the tutor slapped him.The boy ran out of the institute and told his father and a neighbour what had happened. His father told the court that when he went back to the institute a few minutes later, he found the tutor naked.Defence witnesses argued that there was a monetary transaction between the tutor and the boy's father, which led to a tiff. The case had been registered against the tutor out of malice. They also claimed that the tutor never operated a computer institute. Defence counsel further pointed out that there were no independent witnesses and those presented by the prosecution were relatives or interested parties. It also argued that there were inconsistencies in the witnesses' statements.The court, however, ruled that the argument of inconsistency was unacceptable. It said it was clear from the records that the nature of the incident had been consistently described as an ‘attempt' at rape in all three previous statements given by the boy. "The use of words like ‘committed a wrongdoing' in the examination-in-chief, rather than indicating any substantial change in the nature of the incident, appears to be a result of the victim's language and mental state, especially while describing it in court. The medical evidence also provided no concrete evidence of complete penetration. Therefore, the tutor's ‘attempt' to commit an unnatural sexual offence is proven. It is a well-established legal principle that in sexual offences, if some discrepancies are found in minor or descriptive aspects of the incident in various statements of the victim, the entire prosecution story cannot be declared unreliable on this basis alone, as long as the basic structure of the incident, the role of the accused, the time, place and nature of the criminal act remain consistent and coherent," said Judge Deepika Tiwary on Wednesday declaring the tutor guilty. The court said that since the offence under sections 377 and 511 of IPC and section 7/8 of the POCSO Act were the same, the tutor was sentenced under POCSO provisions and under section 323 IPC. Judge Tiwary ordered that all sentences would run concurrently and would be adjusted against the time already spent in jail.