JUDGMENT :

SANJIB BANERJEE, C.J.

The appeal is more in desperation by a perpetrator of a heinous offence who has married, apparently under pressure, an underaged woman who he had raped when she was about eight years old.

2. Most of the facts stand virtually admitted, notwithstanding the de facto complainant and the principal eye-witness retracting their original statements at the time of the deposition at the trial and being declared hostile.

3. The incident is of May 26, 2014. In the survivor’s statement recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 before the Judicial Magistrate, First Class, West Garo Hills, she said that on the relevant day, the appellant, who was a neighbour, had come to the survivor’s house at a time when no one was at home except an infant brother. The survivor claimed that she was playing outside the house with her infant brother when the appellant came to her and gagged her mouth and took her inside the house. Once inside the house, the appellant apparently took off the survivor’s clothes, laid her down and inserted his penis into her vagina. She recalled that she could not raise a hue and cry as her mouth was gagged. She also claimed in such statement that after some time her paternal grandmother came inside the room and shouted at the appellant whereupon the appellant pushed the grandmother away and fled. She recounted that she was bleeding in her private parts over the next four days.

4. The first information report came to be lodged only on May 30, 2014 and a medical examination was conducted on the survivor long thereafter on June 12, 2014. The medical examiner noted that the survivor had been accompanied by her grandmother. In recording the history of the case, the medical examiner wrote out that the survivor was outside her house eating mangoes, when the appellant, who was known to her, grabbed her and took her inside her house and molested her before her parental grandmother appeared on the scene following which the appellant disengaged and fled. The medical report indicated that there was no sign of recent sexual intercourse “but in view of the hymen being torn and the vagina being lax for her age, sexual intercourse cannot be ruled out.”

5. It appears that by the time the matter reached the trial stage of evidence being recorded, there may have been some sort of an agreement between the families of the appellant and the survivor for the appellant to marry the survivor. It is not uncommon, even today, for girl children who are raped of being made to feel ashamed and led to believe that it was their fault that they had been raped.

6. Both the de facto complainant and the paternal grandmother of the survivor turned hostile. In particular, the paternal grandmother claimed that there was a commission at her house on the relevant date following which she was taken to the police station and was required to append her thumb impression to some form of statement that was written out by the police.

7. However, the survivor stuck to her statement, though there were minor departures in course of her deposition at the trial from the original statement that she had rendered under Section 164 of the Code. These minor aberrations are the principal thrust of the appellant’s argument now as the appellant claims that the quality of the oral evidence of the survivor was not such that it could be made the basis for the appellant’s conviction. The survivor claimed, in course of her de