‘Children below 12 years are asexual, can’t recognise disguised love’
The Hindu
Delhi court convicts 28-year-old man of sexually assaulting 11-year-old
Noting that children under the age of 12 years are “asexual” and take time to recognise that the disguised love, affection or warmth by the perpetrator is “wrongful or sinful”, a Delhi court has convicted a 28-year-old man of sexually assaulting a minor girl in 2017.
The order, passed by Principal District and Sessions Judge Dharmesh Sharma on February 15, also noted that on becoming aware of the act’s implication, “the next stage is that of putting up resistance and reporting the incident to the near and dear ones”.
Observing that minor victims of sexual assault often find it difficult to express themselves for a variety of reasons, the court stated: “When someone close to the family subjects them [children] to sexual abuse, they are reluctant to discuss it with their parents as they are unsure of how their parents would react.”
According to the case records, on June 27, 2017, the convict, Mustkim, sexually assaulted the minor daughter of a neighbour on the terrace of his building in Nangloi. The girl was 11-year-old at that time.
The prosecution said the convict also threatened to kill her. Thereby, he was booked under the POCSO Act and Section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of IPC. The chargesheet in the case was filed in August 2017.
The court said it is unable to persuade itself to find any blemishes in the testimony of the victim so as to find her story unreliable. “She [victim] did not depose in a parrot-like manner and there is nothing to suggest that she had been tutored by her mother or anyone else,” the judge said while observing that the victim’s testimony is of “sterling quality” and “has the ring of truth”.
“The testimony of the prosecutrix read as a whole leaves an impression that in her girlish manner she narrated the incidents of sexual assault in a very cogent and reliable manner and there are no inconsistencies that would go to the root of the matter and make her testimony unreliable,” the judge stated in his order.
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