A Delhi court acquitted a man of charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl as the victim turned hostile in the trial.
In a complaint lodged with the Naib Sarai police in south Delhi in 2015, the victim’s father had alleged that the accused, Akhtar Ali, had enticed his daughter to a house of his friend, Kunal, and had sex with her against her will.
But in the victim’s statement recorded by a Metropolitan Magistrate, the girl said she had gone to Kunal’s house, who was her friend’s boyfriend. Her friend too had come along.
The victim had then called her boyfriend Akhtar Ali and had consensual sex with him.
‘No wrong was done’
In her evidence in the trial, the victim had deposed that she did not know anything about this case.
She further deposed that nothing wrong was done with her by any person.
She maintained that she never made any statement before the police regarding any incident.
On her statement before the Metropolitan Magistrate, the girl said she did so on the advice of an unknown person who met her at the gate of the court and told her that if she gave her statement, her father would not be implicated in the present case.
“In the overall facts and circumstances of the case and keeping in view the testimonies of the victim and the complainant (father of the victim), there being no incriminating evidence against the accused, he is not found guilty of committing the offences punishable under Section 376 of the IPC and Section 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act as charged against him and he is entitled to be acquitted. Accordingly, accused Akhtar Ali is acquitted of the said offences,” Additional Sessions Judge Balwant Rai Bansal said in his judgment.
