SATYAJIT ROY Vs. STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant was convicted and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for a term of five years and also to pay fine of Rs.50,000.00, in default, to undergo simple imprisonment for a term of nine months for committing offence under Sec. 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (hereafter described as POCSO Act).

(2.) The instant appeal is directed against the judgment and order of conviction as mentioned above passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, 2nd Court at Bankura in Special Case No. 2 of 2018 corresponding to Sessions Trial No. 1(3) of 2018.

(3.) Indisputably, the appellant is a teacher of English imparting private tuition. The victim girl was a student of class XII on the alleged date of occurrence. It is not clear whether she attained majority or not which I propose to deal with elaborately at the subsequent stage. She stated her age to be of 17 years on the date of alleged incident. The incident took place on 23/12/2017 and on 9/1/2018, the victim girl herself lodged a complaint of aggravated penetrative sexual assault committed upon her by her teacher on 23/12/2017 at about 6.15 p.m., when she went to him to take private tuition. An explanation of delay was made out in the written complaint which was treated as FIR that she could not state the incident to anybody out of fear but subsequently, she while pondering the matter, gained mental strength to make a complaint in the local police station against the accused.