DILIP KUMAR PASWAN Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE solitary Appellant was tried by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Supaul by being charged under Section 376 IPC in S.T. No. 91 of 2005 and by judgment dated 28.12.2005, was found guilty of committing that offence. After hearing the Appellant on sentence on 7.1.2006, the learned trial judge directed the Appellant to suffer rigorous imprisonment for ten years as also to pay a fine of rupees five thousand else, to suffer another term of rigorous imprisonment for six months. The Appellant appeals against the judgment of conviction and order of sentence passed upon him.

(2.) THE informant Duro Devi (P.W. 9) is the mother of the victim P.W. 10 Shri Kumari. She stated in her fardbeyan (Ext. 2) that she was to go out to scrap grass and, as such, she put her one year old son into the lap of the victim Shri Kumari asking her to take care of him so long as she was away to scrap the grass. While she was scrapping grass, she heard the cries of her child and rushed back to her house to find that her son was in the lap of the present Appellant and Shri Kumari was lying inside the house of the present Appellant and was also bleeding from her private parts. The informant asked the Appellant as to what he had done to the little girl upon which, the Appellant attempted to run away. He was caught by the informant, who was also raising a halla, which attracted the other ladies of the neighborhood. Subsequently, the little child Shri Kumari (P.W. 10), who was unconscious, was brought to Sadar hospital, Supaul and was admitted there for treatment and the child also stated to her mother, the informant, that the act was perpetrated upon her by the present Appellant.

(3.) IT appears from the records of the Magistrate that the Appellant had raised a plea of juvenility after being remanded in the instant case, i.e., Supaul P.S. Case No. 182 of 2004 and, as such, a full -fledged order was drawn up on 14.3.2005 by the magistrate to initiate an enquiry on the plea of juvenility of the Appellant. For, the Appellant was not producing any evidence in support of his plea, the Magistrate directed the constitution of a board of doctors for assessing the age of the Appellant and, accordingly, the Civil Surgeon -cum -Chief Medical Officer, Supaul was forwarding the report of the medical board vide his memo No. 60 dated 28.4.2005, which was received by the learned magistrate on 29.4.2005 and by order of the same date, the Magistrate found that the Appellant was aged about twenty years and as such his plea of being a juvenile could not be entertained or accepted and the same was rejected. This may be of some relevance to point out that order dated 29.4.2005 rejecting the plea of the Appellant about his juvenility attained finality on account of not being assailed before any appropriate forum. I have noted down these facts for the reason, which shall appear a little later.