Justice Sharma was dealing with a plea filed by a man accused of sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl in 2016 and charged with several offences under the POCSO Act as well as Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Rakesh, the defendant, had filed a petition with the High Court to overturn the trial court’s decision to deny his request according to Section 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). Claiming the survivor and her mother’s earlier cross-examination was only done for the purpose of formality, the petitioner had requested instructions to re-call them. The court stated after analyzing the matter that six years had passed since the prosecutrix, and her mother’s testimony was recorded in front of the trial court.
The court also noted that the child victim had experienced the trauma of perverse sexual assault twice, the first time when she was only seven years old and the second time while giving a statement to the police and giving evidence under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code in front of a magistrate and the trial court, respectively.
Any legislation, whether it is gender-based or not , has the potential to be abused, according to Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, but that does not imply that the government or the judiciary should cease passing or enforcing those laws. Most importantly, The Court said that any law can be misused but that does not mean that the legislature should stop enacting those laws and judiciary should stop applying them.
Reference: Abrogation of Article 370: LIVE UPDATES from Supreme Court [Day 4] (barandbench.com)
This is written by Ms. Meera Benjarge Student of Manikchand Pahade Law College, Aurangabad intern under legal vidhiya
