A 22-year-old man has been jailed for seven years by a fast track court here for raping his cousin and forcing her to undergo abortion when she became pregnant.
Additional Sessions Judge T. R. Naval convicted the young man who repeatedly raped the girl and made false promises of marriage to her. The court, however, took a lenient view towards the youth after he said he was willing to marry her now and the victim also pleaded for a lenient view.
“It is held that the prosecution has successfully proved its case against the convict beyond any reasonable suspicion or shadow of doubt that he not only committed sexual intercourse with the girl forcibly and repeatedly against her will and made her pregnant, but also compelled her to terminate her pregnancy,” Additional Sessions Judge T R Naval said.
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Rejecting the convict’s earlier contention that he and the girl were cousins and their marriage was prohibited, the court said: “Conversely, sexual assault by a person in such relationship is more serious than the assault by strangers as it is the duty of that relative to protect a female and when she is assaulted by such person who is supposed to help her, it is more serious and dangerous.”
The convict had met the girl at a relative’s marriage in March 2009, after which they struck up a friendship and started meeting each other. The prosecution said he called the girl to a restaurant and that after she consumed some food, she felt giddy and asked the accused to drop her at her house. However, he took her to his rented accommodation at Mukherjee Nagar and raped her.
He repeated intercourse with her on the false promise of marriage, the police said, after which she became pregnant. The police said he made her undergo an abortion against her wishes on the pretext that it was done to save her life.
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In November 2011, after the convict refused to marry the girl and his parents also were not in favour of the same, she lodged a complaint with the police.