HARIPADA SAHA Vs. STATE OF TRIPURA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is filed by the original accused who has been convicted for offences under Section 354 IPC and Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act for short) and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of three years for each offence. The sentences would however, run concurrently.

(2.) The prosecution version was that the accused was a tutor of the daughter of the first informant. On 21.06.2017 she had gone to the house of the teacher for private tuition at about 7.15 in the morning. When finding privacy with the victim the accused tried to remove her top and embarrassed her. She resisted and went to the house of the sister of the complainant situated nearby. Upon hearing of the incident he and his wife went to the house of a sister. An FIR was promptly filed before the nearby police station a couple of hours later. A charge was framed against the accused for having committed offences punishable under Sections 354 IPC and Section 8 of the POCSO Act.

(3.) PW-3, the victim girl deposed before the Court that the accused was her private tutor since two years. On the date of incident at 7.15 she had gone to the house of the accused to discuss of the selection of a subject in the higher secondary course, at that time his wife was in the kitchen and daughter was in the bathroom. The accused suddenly open her top and pressed her breasts. She called the wife of the accused and told her about the incident. She requested her not to disclose it to anybody. She rushed out the house and went to her Aunt Kalpana Acharjee's house situated near the house of the accused, where her parents were called. She narrated the incident to her parents upon which the father had lodged the complaint. In the cross-examination, she stated that the house of the accused comprised of a single hut. At the time of the incident she did not raise an alarm but called his wife. Her Aunt Kalpana's house is separated by two or three houses from that of the accused. She gone there crying. She admitted that in her statement before the Magistrate she had not stated about the accused opening the top of her dress.