SHANKAR TUKARAM URSAL Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal arising out an order of conviction and sentence passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Pune, dated 24th June, 1974, convicting the accused appellant under section 376 I.P.C. and sentencing him to suffer R.I. for one year and a fine of Rs. 200/- or in default to suffer R.I. for one month.

(2.) This appeal has a very narrow compass and the question which arises mainly is whether the conviction of the accused under section 376 I.P.C. can be sustained. The facts of the are very simple and they are narrated in the judgment of the lower Court. I do not, therefore, propose to deal with the facts of the case in greater detail.

(3.) Mr. Agarwal for the accused submitted before me that the conviction was unwarranted and that this was a case of some accident relating to an injury of a private part of a young girl and the necessary ingredients for the purpose of establishing the offence under section 376 are not established. He took me through the evidence of the girl, who is aged five, her mother and her father and also through the medical evidence. The learned Additional Sessions Judge has very carefully shifted the entire evidence and considered the evidence of the girl, though a child witness, being such that he was inspired that the child was not telling a lie when the child said that injury resulting into bleeding from her private part was caused by the private part of the accused. Mr. Agarwal, however, submitted that this is a slightly improved version of what the child narrated immediately after the alleged offence. He said that no doubt the child said that the accused took out blood from her private part, but the second part, namely, that it was by the use of the private part of the accused was not narrated by her immediately after the alleged offence. Therefore, he wanted me not to accept the word of the child, as also that of the father and mother and to come to the conclusion that this was a mere case of an accident.