IMPORTANT POINT
The failure of the appellants' attempt to set up an alibi and the reliance on the essential features of the victim's evidence and its corroboration were central to the court's decision.

JUDGMENT

Sanjib Banerjee, CJ. - The three appellants have been convicted under Section 376(2)(g) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and have been each sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment together with a fine of Rs. 30,000/-. In default of payment of the fine, they have to suffer rigorous imprisonment for a further period of six months.

2. The incident is of the new year's day of 2009. The victim was then 15 years old. That was at a time when the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 had not been promulgated and the punishment for a rapist was lighter than it is now.

3. Before adverting to the facts, it may do well to notice the principal grounds urged on behalf of the appellants in this common appeal. At the outset, it may also be noticed that the appellants ran a common defence at the trial.

4. The primary anomalies pointed out on behalf of the appellants pertain to certain facts and their presentation by the three principal dramatis personae: the victim herself, her father who lodged the first information report on January 3, 2009 and a brother of the father who heard the victim's cries and was the first to reach the spot in a jungle off the Langja village in which the victim resided then. According to the appellants, there are two distinct versions of the victim as to where the victim was coming from and where she was going to when she was apparently grabbed by the appellants and dragged to the nearby forest. The appellants also point out that the exact time of the incident and the duration thereof do not match if the statements of the three principal prosecution witnesses are taken into account. The appellants next focus on the victim's uncle having initially asserted that he had single-handedly lifted the victim from the place of occurrence and ferried her to her residence, but that was contradicted consistently by the victim's father who claimed that his brother informed him of the incident, whereupon the father accompanied his brother to the place of occurrence and the two brothers carried the victim back to her house. The appellants also question the circumstances in which the victim's uncle was in the area at a time that ought to have been very deep into the night and how such person came to hear the muffled cries of the victim. Finally, the appellants submit that if it is the consistent case of both the victim and the victim's father that the victim became unconscious at the place of occurrence and remained unconscious for the next four days, it was not possible for the FIR to have disclosed the names of the assailants since no one other than the victim claimed to have seen the assailants.

5. In addition, the appellants refer to a supplementary FIR being lodged several days after the initial one. The full names and better particulars of the appellants herein were only disclosed in such supplementary FIR lodged on January 22, 2009. Here again, the appellants point out that the supplementary FIR, though lodged more than 20 days after the incident, also claimed that the victim was still unconscious as on such date.

6. The statements of the victim, her father and the uncle were recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. The victim claimed that while she was returning after attending a new year's function at her aunt's, she was waylaid by the three appellants, gagged and dragged into a nearby forest and repeatedly raped and assaulted by the trio. The victim's version appears to be that for a period of more than four hours, she was ravaged after being forced into the forest by the three appellants. Though the victim claimed that she lost her consciousness and she remained unconscious for the next several days, yet the victim indicated, quite clearly, that it was her uncle who came to rescue her. The victim informed the Magistrate that she had come from her hospital bed to make her statement.

7. The father's statement before the Magistrate revealed that the father was informed of the i