PALAKKAD: The verdict of the Palakkad POCSO court which acquitted three of the accused -- V Madhu, Shibu and M Madhu -- in the suicide of two dalit minor girls in Walayar following sexual abuse observed that the charge sheet filed by the police lacked any scientific evidence.
In the case of the first accused V Madhu alias Valiya Madhu, the judgment said, “When going through the evidence of the prosecution witnesses and from the arguments of the special public prosecutor, it is clear that there is no direct evidence regarding the involvement of the accused in the commission of the offences alleged. The prosecution is mainly relying on circumstantial evidence to contend that the accused has committed a grave sexual offence against the girl and hence she committed suicide.”
The prosecution relied on the postmortem findings to say that the girl was subjected to repeated sexual abuse. Three witnesses were produced by the prosecution to contend that the girl had been going to the house of the accused and vice versa which gave the latter the opportunity to commit the offence. The court said that the accused did not dispute the fact that he is a relative of the victim and had been visiting the house.
DySP M J Sojan who headed the special investigation team had collected 33 items from the crime scene for chemical analysis including the victim's clothes. He also collected samples for DNA profiling. But the chemical analysis report did not show the presence of semen on the items collected by the investigating officer.
The judgment says that though the police surgeon Dr P B Gujral who conducted the postmortem had opined that there was evidence suggestive of an unnatural sexual offence on the girl, the opinion given by the expert is not conclusive proof.
Expert evidence can only be used for the purpose of corroboration. In this case, there is no substantive evidence against the accused to be corroborated by the police surgeon, said the judgement.
On analyzing the entire evidence adduced by the prosecution, all that has been shown is that the accused is a relative of the girl and that the accused had an opportunity to visit the house. But there was nothing else to link the accused to the alleged offences, the court said.
In the judgment acquitting the fourth accused M Madhu alias Kutty Madhu, the judges felt that the prosecution is mainly relying on probabilities to contend that the accused might have committed sexual assault against the victim and prompted her to commit suicide.
A criminal case cannot be decided on the basis of probabilities. Both direct and circumstantial evidence was absent in the case, the court felt.
In the case of the acquittal of the second accused Shibu, the judgment pointed out that the accused did not dispute that he had been residing with the family of the victim. The stepfather of the girl did not clarify what was the exact confession made by the accused to him. He had also not mentioned the involvement of Shibu in the sexual offence to the police when his statement was recorded under section 161 of the CRPC.
While one of the witnesses had deposed that the victim once stated to her that the accused is not a good man, the court observed that the depositions of most of the witnesses, except the parents of the girls, were not strong enough.
The prosecution examined 30 witnesses in the case of V Madhu, 24 witnesses in the case of Shibu and 21 witnesses in the case of M Madhu.
Of the witnesses, only six who were locals were known to have interacted with the deceased girls before their death. Four of them turned hostile.