LUCKNOW: A special POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) court, on Monday, sentenced a juvenile to 20 years of imprisonment for raping a three-year-old girl.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on the convict saying that the penalty amount would go to the victim. Special POCSO court judge Vijendra Tripathi clarified that if the convict failed to deposit the penalty, he would have to serve three additional months in jail.
In this case, at the time of the crime, the accused juvenile was a minor of 17 years of age which was established after his medical examination. However, considering the crime committed by the juvenile as heinous, the Juvenile Justice Board constituted a committee under the POCSO Act to ascertain if the accused was mentally mature to understand the consequences of the crime he was committing.
The committee submitted its report on November 11, 2019, saying that the juvenile, at the time of committing the crime, had an understanding of the severity of the criminal offence but he was oblivious of the consequences.
Based on the committee report, the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) referred the matter to the special POCSO court to hold the trial of the accused considering him a major.
Under the POCSO Act, if the juvenile, despite having an understanding of the harshness of the offence, commits the heinous crime, his trial would be conducted by the regular POCSO court instead of JJB.
Consequently, the trial was conducted in the special POCSO court and based on the evidence corroborating the crime, it convicted the accused for the offences of rape under relevant IPC sections and sexual assault under the POCSO Act.
The matter pertained to the Kakori police station area on the outskirts of Lucknow. The grandmother of the three-year-old rape survivor had submitted a complaint to the police authorities of the police station concerned on May 6, 2019, claiming that her neighbour lured the victim to his house where he raped her and committed penetrative sexual assault on her.
Later, the boy, who was a minor at the time of incident, was nabbed and sent to the JJB. Now at the time of conviction, the accused has turned 23.