Child's teary silence can't aid rapist's defence: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Reversing the acquittal of a person in a 40-year-old rape case, Supreme Court said the silence of a little girl with tears rolling down her cheeks when asked about the incident in the trial court during cross-examination cannot be an indicator of innocence of the accused.

Slamming the insensitivity of the Rajasthan HC judge for acquitting the accused, who was 21 when convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment by the trial court in 1987 for raping the minor, SC also criticised HC for naming the rape survivor.

Can't equate girl's silence to that of adult prosecutrix: SC
HC took 26 years to decide the appeal of the convict and acquitted him through a six-page judgment. The Rajasthan govt's appeal, filed in 2013, was finally decided by an SC bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol after 12 years, indicative of the trend that while trial courts decide cases expeditiously, it is the constitutional courts where appeals linger for decades.

The trial judge had recorded the child rape survivor had not deposed anything about the commission of the offence during cross-examination and when repeatedly asked, "she shed tears in silence".

HC had taken this as one of the grounds to acquit the convict.

Writing the judgment, Justice Karol said, "This, in our view, cannot be used as a factor in favour of the accused. The tears of 'V' (minor girl) have to be understood for what they are worth. This silence cannot accrue to the benefit of the accused. The silence here is that of a child. It cannot be equated with the silence of a fully realised adult prosecutrix..."

"V has not turned hostile. Trauma has engulfed her in silence. It would be unfair to burden her young shoulders with the weight of the entire prosecution. A child traumatised at a tender age by this ghastly imposition upon her must be relieved of being the basis on which her offender can be put behind bars," Justice Karol said and proceeded to cull out other relevant evidence, medical and circumstantial, which unequivocally pointed to the guilt of the accused, Chhatra.

The medical evidence pointed to the ghastly way Chhatra sexually assaulted the girl. After examining other evidence on the case records, Justices Nath and Karol allowed the appeal, set aside the HC judgment and upheld the conviction and sentence awarded to Chatra by trial court.

Chhatra, who was 22 years of age when he was convicted by the trial court in 1987, would now be over 60 years and SC directed him to surrender before the authorities concerned within four weeks to serve the sentence.