SC frees man jailed 13 years for rape of 4-year-old girl, slams ‘botched’ probe

New Delhi: It is a case where both the accused and the survivor ended as sufferers of the justice delivery system as injustice was done to the former who had to spend 13 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, while the latter was denied justice as the real perpetrator of sexual assault on her when she was four years old was not brought to book.

Noting that the police conducted a “hopelessly botched investigation” and cooked up a story against the accused to protect the real culprit, and lower courts mechanically accepted the prosecution’s version and failed to unveil the truth, an SC bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta acquitted the accused in the case of sexual assault of a girl in Godhra in 2013.

The relief came after the accused, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by trial court and Gujarat HC, had spent 13 years in jail.

Gujarat police hopelessly botched probe that obscured, rather than unveiled, the truth: SC
This court cannot remain oblivious to the sobering reality that such handling of criminal cases leaves scars not merely upon the individuals involved but upon the justice system itself. When investigations are carried out in a manner that betrays their foundational purpose, and trials become mechanical exercises divorced from the quest for truth, the resulting miscarriage of justice reverberates far beyond the confines of the courtroom. It erodes public faith, instils uncertainty in victims, and sends a chilling message to society at large that the pursuit of justice may falter not at the altar of complexity but at the hands of indifference. The criminal law, which must stand as a bulwark protecting the vulnerable, risks becoming an instrument of unintended cruelty when procedural lapses and institutional negligence overshadow substantive justice,” the SC bench said.

It expressed deep concern over the way in which Gujarat police conducted the probe. After examining the statements of various witnesses, the court came to conclusion that the entire story implicating the accused for the crime was cooked up after consultations and deliberations on the day after to the incident. The effect of this grave embellishment on the prosecution case was not considered in the correct perspective either by the trial court or HC, the bench said.

“A grave and distressing case of brutal sexual assault upon a four-year old girl stands before this court, enveloped in layers of investigative apathy and procedural infirmities. The FIR, despite the informant’s professed complete knowledge of the incident, is bereft of even the most rudimentary details, neither the name of the accused person (appellant herein) nor those of the purported witnesses of the last seen together circumstance find mention. What followed was an investigation hopelessly botched and a trial conducted with a pedantic rigidity that obscured, rather than unveiled, the truth. The highly unnatural conduct of the witnesses, marked by gross insensitivity/rank apathy, contradictions and apparent concoctions raises serious doubts about the reliability of the prosecution’s case. Yet, in face of this disturbing matrix, the accused stands convicted and has remained behind bars for nearly thirteen long years,” it said.

The court said the investigating officer failed to secure and preserve crucial forensic material which would have provided objective corroboration and assisted in ascertaining the truth. It said the failure not only weakens the prosecution’s case but also raises a legitimate apprehension that the investigation may not have been carried out with the requisite fairness and diligence and the possibility that “such inaction was intended, or at least operated, to shield the actual perpetrators of the offence cannot be ruled out”.


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