A youth has been sent to four years in jail for trying to rape a toddler by a Delhi court which observed such "nefarious" assaults on minors are on the rise.
Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Illa Rawat sentenced northwest Delhi resident Sachin Kumar to four years rigorous imprisonment and said if the two-year-old girl's mother would not have reached on time at the spot, the accused might have caused "ugly bodily harm" to the child.
The court said that the child was so vulnerable because of her age that she could not even have resisted him or narrated the incident to anyone.
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"The act of convict (Kumar), though on the face of it, is not gruesome, but has had far fetched and irreparable consequences on the life of a girl child.
"The instances of minor girls being victim to such nefarious acts and deeds are on rise and thus, no leniency is called for in the matter," the court said.
The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on Kumar and also directed him to pay a compensation of Rs 20,000 to the child through her mother.
According to the prosecution, Aman Vihar resident Kumar had attempted to rape the minor, who was his neighbour, on the morning of November 9, 2011.
The child's mother told the court when she had gone out to fetch water, Kumar had taken the minor to his room and there he tried to rape her.
When she heard the child's cries, she rushed towards the room of Kumar and found him committing the crime, the woman said, adding that on seeing her, he ran away and she picked up the minor and returned home.
She said Kumar had turned up the volume of television so that the neighbours could not hear the child's cries.
The court rejected the plea of Kumar that he was falsely implicated and he had taken the child in his lap when he saw her crying.
"...That on the day of incident, accused had taken the victim to his room with lustful intention...," the court said.
