To ensure jail term awarded to convicts act as “deterrent and is simultaneously reformative with a prospect of rehabilitation”, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday directed Mandoli jail here to conduct correctional course through meditation therapy for a man convicted for raping a mentally challenged minor girl.
Counselling
Justice Anu Malhotra directed the Superintendent concerned of the jail, where convict Chattu Lal is lodged, to also counsel him so that he is understands why he has been put behind the bars.
The High Court also ordered conducting of psychometric tests to measure Lal’s reformation during the remaining period of time — nine years, five months and eighteen days — that is left to be served by him in jail.
‘Rehabilitation’
The judge also asked the jail authorities to shape the post-release rehabilitation programme for Lal well in advance before the date of his release to make him self-dependent.
This may include educational opportunity, vocational training and skill-development programme to enable a livelihood option and an occupational status, the court said.
The High Court’s direction came while upholding the conviction and 15-year jail term awarded to Lal for raping a 12-year-old girl in 2013.
The mother of the victim had in her complaint, made on August 14, 2013, said that victim and her sister was playing around noon on the day of the incident.
The mother, after some time, noticed that the victim was missing. The mother started searching for her. She later found her daughter in front of the Lal’s shop. The victim was bleeding. Her legs and clothes were smeared with blood. She was crying.
Lal was sweeping the floor of his shop. The victim then pointed towards Lal, seeing which he tried to flee, but the people present in the area at that time caught him.
During the trial, which went for three years, the prosecution faced several challenges in recording the statement of the victim as she can neither speak nor hear.
After the victim’s statement could not be recorded even with the help of an interpreter, she was examined at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, Delhi, where she was declared mentally challenged.
The doctor who examined the victim found the social age of the victim to be about 2 years and 7 months, the social quotient being 22, which indicated that the victim had severe level of retardation in social and adoptive functioning.
The High Court directed the legal service authority to ensure that the ₹3 lakh, which was awarded as compensation to the victim, is paid to her parents for her welfare and rehabilitation.
