The Madras High Court Bench here has set aside the conviction and 10 years of rigorous imprisonment imposed on two individuals for having allegedly raped a woman in her house near a salt pan in Pullaveli village in Tuticorin district on September 11, 2003.
Allowing a criminal appeal filed jointly by Jayasankar and Saravanan way back in 2005 challenging their 2004 conviction, Justice S. Nagamuthu held that the conviction could not be confirmed in view of material contradictions in the evidence produced by the prosecution to prove its case.
“It is submitted by the learned Additional Public Prosecutor that since it is a gang rape (in which a juvenile was also involved and tried separately before a Juvenile Justice Board), there is a legal presumption against the accused that they should have committed the heinous crime.
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“In this regard, I have to state that any such presumption is undoubtedly rebuttable. But in this case, this court finds it difficult even to raise such a presumption because of the contradictions and improbabilities noticed in the evidence of the victim and her parents,” the judge said.
Complaint after 3 days
He pointed out that the victim had lodged a police complaint three days after the alleged offence took place and she admittedly did not know the names of the accused even at the time of her medical examination. But surprisingly, the First Information Report contained all three names.
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Further, during the course of cross examination before the trial court, the victim had tacitly admitted that she knew nothing about the contents of the FIR and the police failed to name the person who drafted the FIR and no witness was examined by the prosecution on this aspect.
The judge also wondered why the victim and her parents didn’t raise alarm to alert their neighbours despite the accused having supposedly stayed in their house for over seven hours on the night of the alleged incident. He also pointed out that none of the neighbours had deposed in favour of the victim.