80-yr-old acquitted in POCSO case after complainant's inconsistent testimony

Inconsistent testimony by the mother of a girl led to the acquittal of an 80-year-old man who had been accused of sexually assaulting the minor.

As it dropped charges against the octogenarian, the Sessions court held that contradictory statement is always "doubtful evidence" and punishing a person on the basis of such a testimony always results in the "miscarriage of justice".

According to the prosecution, accused Sudhirprakash Arora was arrested by the Kandivali police in 2015 for allegedly misbehaving with a minor. In her statement, the girl's mother alleged that Arora preyed on her daughter when she was playing with her friends near their house.

It was alleged that Arora offered to give the children a ride in his car and asked them to get inside. During the ride, he allegedly misbehaved with the minor, who narrated the experience to her mother. Following a complaint from the mother, the Samta Nagar police booked the man under the POCSO Act, a legislation aimed at effectively addressing sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.

The woman never brought her daughter to the court on the grounds that she did not want her to undergo the mental trauma of recounting the incident. The court observed that her statement in the first information report was completely different from the version described in the court.

The court sided with the senior citizen after the defence successfully established that the accused and child's family had run-ins in the past and that they had threatened to implicate him in a criminal case.