DEVKI ALIAS KALA Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Parvati, an unsophisticated girl of 17 was wending her way home at about sunset along a public street in the artless town of Sitaplur in Bihar when Smt. Devki, the petitioner before us, with diabolic design, swooped down and snatched her into a taxi-cab and blitzed away. The weeping victim was medicated into unconsciousness, removed to Dhanbad and further on, to destination Haryana. Tragically, where tourists abound, satellite industries in female flesh flourish unless the State crusades with militant zeal to stamp out this terrible vice. Anyway, Parvati, by now enslaved in a village villa, was offered for material sale to affluent lecherous youths. The damsel in distress desperately escaped through a half-ajar door and eventually landed in a police station. The police investigation unraveled the pathetic story and ended up in a case, conviction, appeal, confirmation and, finally, in this special leave petition to this Court which is the last refuge of every vanquished litigant.

(2.) Confronted by concurrent findings of guilt, counsel for the petitioner gave up his attack on the conviction and concentrated his fire on the sentence, which, in this case, was three years' rigorous imprisonment. For what For abducting a teenage girl and forcing her into sexual submission with commercial object, a racket which has become an enormous national menace, notwithstanding the constitutional concern for the weaker sex. Counsel dared to urge that the Probation of Offenders Act should be extended to this abominable culprit who had shown sufficient expertise in the art of abduction, seduction and sale of girls to others who offer a tempting price. The features of this case show that the petitioner suddenly descended in taxi-cab and kidnapped the young woman, and when she cried out, administered the potion which rendered her unconscious. Furthermore, a well laid-out plan is discernible when we see the geographical spread of the crime. From a small town in Bihar, the girl is dispatched to Dhanbad and from there, via Delhi, to Haryana, lodged in a house where young men were asked to view her for obvious immoral purposes. It is an insulting stultification of the amelioratory legislation viz. Probation of Offenders Act to extend its considered provisions to such anti-social, specialist criminals. All that we can do is to reject the plea with indignation and follow it up with an appeal to the State Governments of Bihar and of Haryana to put a special squad on the trail and hound out every such offender so that the streets of our towns and cities may be sanitized and safe after sunset for Indian womanhood. Dismissed.