Man gets jail for raping child who took shelter in his house

A man, who had repeatedly raped a minor girl after she took shelter in his house to save herself from her step-mother's beatings, has failed to get relief from the Delhi High Court which upheld his jail term saying he had "betrayed the trust" of the child.

The court also dismissed the plea filed by the man's wife, who was sentenced to jail for ten years for kidnapping and intimidating the nine-year-old girl, challenging her conviction by trial court in the case.

Besides the couple, the court upheld the jail term awarded to the third convict, who had taken the girl to his village in Bihar and raped her, observing that the minor had narrated"every fact fairly and truly as an innocent child".
 

"Present is a case where a young girl aged 9 years unwanted in her family due to step mother, went for solace and comfort to the house of.... (the couple) who though saved her from the beatings of her parents and gave her food to eat but betrayed the trust as ... (the husband) found her an easy prey to satisfy his lust," Justice Mukta Gupta said.

"Not only she was ravished by (husband) but (wife) sent her with (another convict) to a village in Bihar so that he could satisfy his lust, which he did and brought her back only when the father of the prosecutrix (victim) lodged a report," the court noted in its judgement.

A trial court had convicted these three persons in the case last year. While the two men were awarded 10 years jail term each, the woman was sentenced to jail for seven years.

They had challenged their conviction before the high court on grounds that they were falsely implicated and the girl had made material improvement in her deposition about the incident.

The FIR in the case was registered in 2011 by the girl's father who had said that on May 9, 2011, his daughter had gone out to play but had not returned.

During the investigation, the girl was found at the house of the couple, who were residing near her house. The girl had deposed before the trial court that both the men had raped her several times and when she narrated this to the woman, she had threatened the child not to disclose about it to anybody.