Chennai: The Madras High Court has sentenced a Puducherry-based teacher to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment, in a case pertaining to the sexual assault of a four-year-old UKG girl.
Setting aside the judgement of a special court that acquitted him, the court convicted him under Sections 5 (f) and (m) of the POCSO Act. Justice P Velumurugan exonerated Earlam Periera from offences under Section 506 (ii) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The teacher was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and a 10,000 fine for the offence under Section 5 (f), and another 10 years and a Rs 10,000 fine under Section 5 (m) of the POCSO Act, according to the judgment.
Earlier, the Puducherry public prosecutor D. Bharatha Chakravarthy (since elevated to the post of High Court Judge and expected to assume office today) submitted that the victim, being a child who was only aged about four years at the time of occurrence of the incident in March 2018, cannot speak about the assault in all the stages by parrot version and it could not be expected from her that she should remember all the incidents and the acts of the accused.
Justice Velmurugan observed that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence pointing to sexual assault, which the impugned judgement failed to consider, and said the trial court’s order is liable to be set aside. He further rejected the contention of the accused’s counsel that there was no sexual assault since there were no injuries on the child.