BENGALURU: The City Civil and Sessions Court acquitted AV Shrinath, as the charges of threatening a minor girl with a pistol and raping her, were not proved. Judge M Latha Kumar acquitted businessman Shrinath after neither the victim nor the complainant supported the prosecution, to prove the allegations.
Yelahanka New Town Police booked Shrinath under provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Section 28 of the Arms Act, based on a complaint filed by the girl’s mother on July 23, 2018.
According to the judgment dated November 5, 2018, the girl’s mother and complainant did not support the prosecution and only deposed that she had lodged a missing complaint for her daughter. Later, she learnt that the girl had gone to her relative’s house.
She added that she hadn’t seen the accused, nor given any statement that he had abducted and raped her daughter, threatening her with a fake gun.
“The girl too deposed that she had not seen the accused, nor given any statement before the police. During cross-examination, the public prosecutor failed to elicit anything in support of the prosecution. She said she had visited her relative and was not acquainted with the accused. He had neither taken her in his car, nor committed the alleged crime against her.
The other eyewitness, who had accompanied the victim to the park,asserted that he had not seen the accused,” the court said, while acquitting the accused.
‘Falsely implicated’
Reacting to the judgment, Shrinath said he had suffered after being falsely implicated in a case even before he had completed seven months of married life. “I had never seen the girl, and was fixed for money,” he claimed.
Case history
It was alleged that around 3.30pm on July 23, a first-year PU student, had gone to a park nearby with her male friend, after class hours. They were sitting on a bench in the park, when the accused asked for their details. It was alleged that the accused claimed to be a Crime Officer and forced them to go with him. The male friend ran away and the girl too tried to escape. Srinath then chased her, pulled out a fake gun and threatened to shoot her. The scared girl did not raise an alarm, and he snatched her phone and demanded Rs 5,000 from her. After that, he took her to a room at Chikka Bommasandra, where he raped her.