A 71-year-old man has been sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment for raping a specially-abled girl here. The Court of Additional Sessions Judge Madhurjya Narayan here convicted Soneswar Nath of Uttar Pub Kolakhuwa village in Kaziranga under Bokakhat sub-division for raping the girl with speech disability and thereby impregnating her .
The man was awarded seven years of imprisonment besides directing to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 and in default of payment of fine he shall have to undergo simple imprisonment of another three months under section 376(1) of the IPC.
The judgment was pronounced on Thursday and a copy of it is made available today. The court has ordered the district legal service authority to provide compensation from the fund maintained under the Assam Victim Compensation Scheme to the victim for her rehabilitation as the victim suffered lot of hardships and she also has difficulty in speaking clearly.
The father of the victim set the law in motion by lodging an FIR before the officer-in-charge of Bokakhat police station on November 22, 2010 alleging inter alia that his daughter has difficulty in speaking clearly in addition to having poor intelligence.
The accused person being issueless made a proposal to take the victim as his wife. At this the father of the victim gave his consent however he advised the accused to marry his daughter socially but the accused refused to do so.
The accused was asked by the victim’s father not to visit their house, but the accused taking advantage of the absence of other family members raped the victim resulting in her pregnancy.
When there was change in physical appearance of the victim and after medical examination by doctor then only the father of the victim came to know that his daughter was eight months pregnant.
A complaint regarding the same was lodged before the village defence party and a public meeting was called where he pointed her finger at the accused.
Upon receipt of the FIR, Bokakhat police registered a case under sections 376 and 493 of IPC and submitted the charge-sheet against the accused.
In the trial, the prosecution side was represented by NN Hazarika, Additional Public Prosecutor while the accused was defended by Counsel Pranjal Gogoi.
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