IMPORTANT POINT
The significance of considering the confessional statement in conjunction with the overall evidence and the victim's testimony in cases of sexual offences against children.

JUDGMENT

1. The appellant has been convicted under Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 for having committed aggravated penetrative sexual assault on his step-daughter of 14 years and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 20 years and a fine of Rs.30,000/-. In default of the payment of fine, the appellant is to suffer simple imprisonment for a further period of five months.

2. The appellant contends that the vague allegations of the alleged victim do not constitute any offence and the trial court erred in disregarding the unclear and somewhat fuzzy description of the incident by the victim to find that a case has been made out against the appellant for conviction under the most stringent provision. The appellant refers to his confessional statement recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, but submits that since the trial court did not go solely by the appellant's confession and called for evidence to be presented, the evidence adduced made out no case at all against the appellant.

3. Two persons were named as accused, based on the minor victim's statement. Since the appellant herein was the step-father of the minor victim, the appellant has suffered the more harsh punishment than the other accused who has got a lesser sentence. No appeal has been preferred by the other accused; or, at any rate, such appeal is not before this Court.

4. There is no doubt that in matters involving stringent punishments, trial courts do not go merely by the confessional statement of the accused and look at the evidence to otherwise assess the culpability of the accused. But that does not mean that the moment the trial court requires the evidence to be presented, notwithstanding the confessional statement of the accused, the confessional statement loses all value or effect.

5. Indeed, if the confessional statement corroborates the complaint or if such confessional statement fills up any lacuna in the prosecution case or the evidence in such regard, the court can found the basis of conviction on the confessional statement upon relying on the overall evidence to be satisfied that the confessional statement was relevant.

6. The first information report came to be lodged at the Nongstoin Police Station on April 19, 2016. The mother of the victim, who is the wife of the appellant herein, asserted in the FIR that her second husband had raped her daughter since 2013 till the month of March, 2016 and that her daughter apparently informed her of the incidents only on April 15, 2016 that prompted her to file the FIR on April 19, 2016. In the statement of the victim recorded under Section 164 of the Code, she claimed that she had been raped twice by the appellant herein in 2013 and again in 2014, but was afraid to tell her mother as the appellant had threatened to kill her. According to the victim, the step-father attempted to rape the victim again sometime in the month of March, 2016, when she managed to escape to a jungle. The victim went on to say that her step-father then sent Pherlin (the second accused) 'to look for me in the jungle and when he found me he raped me in the jungle'.

7. In her testimony in court, the minor victim claimed without being specific as to the date of the latest incident that in the month of March, 2016, she was raped by her step-father in a jungle. The victim reiterated that when she had been raped earlier in 2013 and 2014, she was afraid to report the matter to her mother, particularly as the appellant herein had threatened to kill her if she reported the matter to any person. 8. The statement of the minor victim in her examination-in-chief does not indicate in any great detail as to when and how she was raped in March, 2016 and, by the time the victim was medically examined after the FIR was made on April 19, 2016, there were no signs of injury discovered on her person and the medical examiner concluded that there were no recent signs of the minor victim having had sex.