MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently upheld a detention order passed against a pastor on charges that he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl with a physical disability and a partially unsound mind, in the Virudhunagar district.
A Bench of justices R Suresh Kumar and KK Ramakrishnan made the decision in a habeas corpus petition filed by the pastor's wife to set aside the detention order passed by the Virudhunagar collector under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Forest Offenders, Sand Offenders, Sexual Offenders, Slum-Grabbers and Video Pirates, Act, 1982, (Tamil Nadu Act 14 of 1982) in July 2022. The charges were that pastor J Josephraja (49) had committed penetrative sexual assault on the victim girl on the church premises on May 3, 2022.
However, claiming that it is a solitary POCSO case against Josephraja and that he is not a habitual offender, the petitioner's counsel argued that the above Act should not have been invoked. He also alleged some procedural lapses.
But the judges rejected the contentions and observed that the facts of the case shocked their judicial conscience. "The argument of the petitioner's counsel that the detaining authority has no jurisdiction to invoke the provision of Act 14 of 1982 in the case of the solitary incident cannot be countenanced. The act of committing a penetrative sexual assault upon the partially mentally retarded and physically challenged minor victim girl in the premises of church itself has its own propensity to demand the invocation of the Tamil Nadu Act 14 of 1982 against the detenu," the judges opined and dismissed the plea.