Age determination for a victim in criminal cases must prioritize documented educational or municipal records in the prescribed statutory order, applying medical ossification tests only as a last resort. Where medical reports show an age range, benefit of the margin of error must be accorded to the accused.

JUDGMENT

VIMAL KUMAR YADAV, J.

1. Fragmented, stratified and deeply divided Indian society across all the classes left no room practically for the young lovers to choose their partners. If the prescribed barriers are to be breach then, the consequences have been so severe that they have had to pay with their lives at times. In such a deeply divided society, which has not only divided the lives, religion, caste, region or language but even inter-se divisions have been found within a particular social group. In such circumstances, an inter-religious alliance was no less than a sin against such a scenario, where an inter-religious alliance was met with the obvious resistance so much so that one of the partners, that is the prosecutrix herein, who had taken an initial stand of aligning with the Appellant in every aspect from voluntarily accompanying him, to marrying him, having the marriage registered and living with him for about two months, turned tables and shifted the entire blame on the Appellant when she came to depose before the Court, contrary to what she has stated in her statement under Section 161 and 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (Cr.P.C.).

2. The Appellant has primarily assailed the Impugned Judgement dated 23.05.2008 on two counts that the prosecutrix was mature enough and major, having reached the age of consent, as per the pre- amendment provisions and that she had herself of her own violition accompanied the Appellant, took a TSR to reach to a railway station and from there boarded a train to the hometown of the Appellant somewhere in West Bengal and enroute stayed for about 3 ½ hours at Aligarh railway station. On reaching there, she voluntarily opted to marry with the Appellant and got her marriage registered under Special Marriage Act, 1954 prior to the police swooping in on the Appellant and the prosecutrix. Both of them were brought to Delhi where case FIR No.169/2004 was registered on the complaint of the father of the prosecutrix. Police recorded the statement, inter-alia of the prosecutrix under Section 161 Cr.P.C., and got her and the Appellant medically examined etc. To make things sure, statement of the prosecutrix under Section 164 Cr.P.C. was also recorded. And she was sent to the Nari Niketan (Home for women) run by the Government of N.C.T of Delhi. With these contentions, the counsel for the Appellant has assailed Impugned Judgment and in order to buttress and strengthen his arguments he has placed reliance on the following judgments:-

i. Rahul Dev v. State , 2014 SCC OnLine Del 3930;

ii. Shweta Gulati v. The State Govt. of NCT of Delhi , 2018 SCC OnLine Del 10448;

iii. Jaya Mala v. Home Secretary Govt. of J & K, (1982) 2 SCC 538;

iv. State of NCT of Delhi v. Shiva , 2012 SCC OnLine Del 1622;

v. Avdesh Kumar v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi), 2015 SCC Online Del 10666;

vi. Sunil v. State of Haryana , (2010)1 SCC 742;

vii. Tilku v. State of Uttarakhand , 2025 SCC OnLine SC 353;

viii. Mohd. Imran Khan v. State , 2009 SCC OnLine Del 4021;

ix. Nirmal Premkumar v. State , (2024)20 SCC 293;

x. Siddaruda v. State of Karnataka , 2023 SCC OnLine SC 585; and

xi. State v. Rahdey Shyam , 2014 SCC OnLine Del 6812

3. However, appreciating the contentions aforesaid it will be apt to have a brief idea of the facts. On 16.05.04 one Kanhiya Lal (Complainant) went to police station Fresh Bazar and disclosed to the duty officer about