Judge's duty is to see no innocent is punished but also ensure guilty do not escape: HC

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday set aside the judgment of a trial court which had acquitted a man for raping a minor and stated that a judge should not only make sure that no innocent person is punished but also to see that the guilty do not escape.

A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Justice I S Mehta relied upon the testimony of the rape survivor and convicted Surender Kumar alias Pappey and Ravinder alias Kalia for raping her.

Overturning the trial court's judgment, the court stated, "The impugned judgment is thus, a total negation in the quest for search of truth and overlooks the cardinal principle that the duty of a judge presiding over a criminal trial is not merely to see that no innocent person is punished but also to see that the guilty person does not escape and that both the public duties are equally important."

The court stated that it is apparent from the rape survivor's "vivid and indubitable" testimony of what she was subjected to. "The trial court ignored the cardinal tenets of appreciation of evidence, including the weight to be attached to the testimony of the minor victim, since the accused had evidently been identified immediately and arrested contemporaneously," it added.

The high court said that trial court judgement of February 1, 2006, acquitting both accused suffered from the "vice of perversity resulting in grave miscarriage of justice".

A case was lodged against both the convicts in Delhi's Alipur police station in 1997. The case of the prosecution was that the child, a student of class 8th, left her house in the company of her younger brother.

Both the convicts caught hold of the brother and forcibly picked his sister, took her to a nearby vacant plot, threw her inside the school building alongside and thereafter scaled over the wall.

When the rape survivor raised alarm, Surender threatened to kill her and dragged her inside the school and raped her. The prosecution had examined a total of fifteen witnesses to establish their case against the persons.