PUSHPAKARAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has been arrayed as the sole accused in the instant Annexure A1 Crime No. 724/2018 of Mathilakam Police Station which has been registered for the offences punishable under Secs.354, 506(i) of the IPC and Secs.7, 8, 11(i) and 12 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offcens (POCSO) Act, 2012 on the basis of the FIS given by the lady victim now aged 18 years on 22.10.2018 at about 6.25 pm in respect of the alleged incidents which happened on 05.06.2015 at about 11 am. The petitioner has been arrested on 08.08.2019 and has been under detention since then.

(2.) The prosecution case in short as revealed from the FI Statement is that the petitioner now aged 66 years, is the elder brother of the lady victim's father and that her father, who is working as a driver in a Gulf country has been separated from her mother. On 05.06.2015 at about 11 am, the petitioner had come to the victim's residence to invite her for his daughter's marriage and that he had made come close to him and embraced her and had pressed her breast 2-3 times and even said that he wants to suckle from her breast etc. and that she had resisted him and the petitioner had touched her churidar near her genital area. Later, when her paternal grandfather (petitioner's father) had died, she had gone there for attending the funeral and then also, the petitioner had made some sexually obscene comments to her etc.

(3.) The learned counsel for the petitioner would point out that the alleged incidents are said to have happened on 05.06.2015, where as the crime has been lodged only as late as on 22.10.2018 and that there is not even a whisper of an averment anywhere in the FIS to even remotely justify the long and unexplained delay of 3 years, 4 months and 2 weeks in the lodging of the instant crime and that the very credibility and believability of the version of the prosecution is at stake. Further, it is pointed out that it is the admitted case of the victim that her mother and her father (who is the petitioner's brother) were having matrimonial disputes and that he never used to send them any money and that it is only to pressurize the victim's father to compromise with the mother that she has been instigated by her mother to raise false allegations against the petitioner and that the petitioner is an innocent scapegoat in the matrimonial disputes between the parents of the victim. Further that the matrimonial disputes between the parents of the victim has now been resolved as evident from Annexure-A4 dated 29.03.2019, which is after the registration of Annexure-A1 crime on 22.10.2018.