A man has been acquitted of the charge of molesting his 18-year-old daughter by a Delhi court as the girl and her mother did not turn up to depose in the case.
Metropolitan magistrate Jyoti Kler allowed the Mahipalpur resident to walk free after the girl and her mother, who were material witnesses in the case, remained untraceable and failed to testify before the court.
"As the material witnesses (girl and her mother) failed to testify before the court, the veracity and the contents of the complaint could not be tested. There is no other material on record which points towards the guilt of the accused," the court said.
According to the prosecution, the incident took place in August, 2009, when the accused returned home at night and sent his wife to buy liquor for him.
The accused used force on his daughter and molested her, it said, adding that the girl raised an alarm and on hearing her cries, her mother and neighbours reached there.
When the girl narrated the incident to her mother, she confronted the accused but he hit her as well and the next morning, when the girl's brother returned home from his job, they told him about it, the police said.
They said the girl's brother hit the accused for his act and also made a PCR call. A case was registered against the man at Vasant Kunj police station.
The court, however, acquitted the man, saying the whole case was dependent on the testimonies of the girl, her mother and brother, who did not support the prosecution case.
The girl's brother, who was made a witness in the case, deposed in the court that his father was falsely implicated by his mother due to frequent quarrels between them.
During the trial, the accused denied that he had molested his daughter and claimed he was falsely implicated by his wife in connivance with his daughter as he used to have frequent quarrels with her over personal differences.
