By Kavita Mistry 
A Mumbai court has convicted and sentenced a 40-year-old man to 20 years in prison on charges of raping his daughter for three years until she called the helpline for children in 2020, when she was 15-years-old. However, the court has acquitted her aunt for non-reporting of the assault to the police.
On the helpline, the girl alleged that her father had been raping her since 2017, when she was 13-years-old, and the case was immediately lodged with the Malad police station in Mumbai.
The accused is a sweeper in a building and used to smoke and drink. The child’s mother died when she was five-years-old. The girl recounted that her father once came home in a drunken state in 2017 and slept beside her, before sexually assaulting her. On resistance, he abused her in filthy language, used to beat her and threatened her by saying, “Agar tu jyada bolegi toh kaat daloonga” (If you open your mouth, I will cut you into pieces).
The frightened girl told her aunt about the incident over the phone. However, her aunt did nothing and she mustered courage and called the helpline. After the case was registered, the man was arrested and the girl, along with her siblings, were sent to an observation home.
In court, the defence of the accused was that of total denial and false implication. Advocate Sunanda Nandewar, appearing for the girl’s father, submitted that he had scolded her daughter as she was not going to school. She claimed that the girl wanted to roam with the boys at the Chowpatty and hence, he scolded her.
Being aggrieved by his scolding, the girl had lodged a false complaint, the father alleged. Nandewar also submitted that the girl did not suffer any problems in her periods after the incident.
Advocate Kalam Shaikh, appearing for the aunt, said she was not residing with the girl and that she was falsely implicated by the girl at the instance of her two paternal aunts.
Additional Public Prosecutor Geeta Malankar, appearing for the state government, said that the evidence against the girl was supported by medical evidence.
“The girl assigned the fact to her aunt, but she kept mum so she is equally liable for not reporting the act of the accused,” she added.
The judge, Ashwini D Lokhande, observed that the defence had tried to argue that the girl had not stated the word ‘shareerik sambhog‘ (physical intercourse) to the magistrate when her statement was recorded.
However, the judge said, “In sexual assault cases, it is not warranted that the girl should state each and every action of the accused while he was committing the act. It is sufficient for every girl to state that the sexual assault was committed on her by the person. The detailed description is not warranted. Accordingly, playing with the particular words by the accused does not help them.”
The judge observed that the other two sisters of the girl were also witnesses to the incident, but they were too young that the investigating officer had not recorded their statements.
Holding that “no doubt the girl was the real daughter of the accused, but awarding life imprisonment would be a severe punishment” as the accused man did not have criminal antecedents. As the prison authorities had not sent any complaint about his conduct, the judge handed out a 20-year sentence to the man.
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