MD. MONNAF ALI Vs. STATE OF MEGHALAYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appeal is more in desperation by a perpetrator of a heinous offence who has married, apparently under pressure, an underaged woman who he had raped when she was about eight years old.

(2.) Most of the facts stand virtually admitted, notwithstanding the de facto complainant and the principal eye-witness retracting their original statements at the time of the deposition at the trial and being declared hostile.

(3.) The incident is of May 26, 2014. In the survivor's statement recorded under Sec. 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 before the Judicial Magistrate, First Class, West Garo Hills, she said that on the relevant day, the appellant, who was a neighbour, had come to the survivor's house at a time when no one was at home except an infant brother. The survivor claimed that she was playing outside the house with her infant brother when the appellant came to her and gagged her mouth and took her inside the house. Once inside the house, the appellant apparently took off the survivor's clothes, laid her down and inserted his penis into her vagina. She recalled that she could not raise a hue and cry as her mouth was gagged. She also claimed in such statement that after some time her paternal grandmother came inside the room and shouted at the appellant whereupon the appellant pushed the grandmother away and fled. She recounted that she was bleeding in her private parts over the next four days.