MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently upheld the conviction of two persons, including a history-sheeter, for sexual assault of a minor girl in Sivaganga in 2018, but modified their sentence from life term to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment. Three other convicts in the case were acquitted by the court citing lapses in the investigation.
A bench of justices G Jayachandran and Sunder Mohan passed the order in a batch of appeals filed by the five convicts- Burma Pandi alias Durai Pandi, Selvam alias Arulpandian, Chiranjeevi, Prabhakar and Sulaiman- against the Madurai Mahila Court’s order dated April 5, 2019.
According to the prosecution, the five convicts abducted the 15-year-old from her house and sexually assaulted her before dropping her near a bus stop. Though the counsels appearing for the convicts pointed out several lapses in the investigation, the judges opined that those lapses only establish the perfunctory nature of the investigation in a case of this nature and does not render the victim’s evidence doubtful, at least as far as the charges against Burma Pandi and Selvam were concerned. However, the involvement of the other three accused was not proved, the judges added and passed the above order.