HC terms 'unreasonable' plea against victim's versions

The Delhi High Court today termed as "unreasonable" the plea of the condemned convicts that the December 16 gangrape victim gave incoherent dying declarations saying she was not expected to remember all details considering her traumatic physical and mental condition.
A bench of justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani said the contention of the convicts that iron rods used to assault the victim and her male friend were not stated in the preliminary medical reports, was "wholly irrelevant".
It said the weapons were mentioned in the first statement made by the complainant, friend of the victim, and they were later recovered at the instance of prime accused Ram Singh.

"In our view, when she (victim) was suffering from extreme trauma and her physical condition was extremely critical, it would be unreasonable to expect the prosecutrix to narrate intricate details of the incident to the treating doctor.
"Insofar as the complainant (victim's friend) is concerned, the contention that the weapons used are not mentioned in the complainant's MLC (medical report) is again wholly irrelevant.
"In the first statement recorded of the complainant on December 17, 2012, on the basis of which the First Information Report (FIR) was registered, there is a clear mention of the use of iron rods as weapons of offence and thus by no stretch it can be said that iron rods were subsequently introduced in the prosecution version of the incident," the court said.

It also said, "The contention that the victims do not refer to the use of iron rods in their MLCs thus pales into insignificance. The subsequent statements of the victims establishes user of the rods, which also stands corroborated by the medical and scientific evidence on record."

On the defence claim that the victim's statement giving names of the accused was fabricated as one of the names in it was incorrect, the bench said the very fact that one of the names has not been correctly given in the said document is an assurance that it is not a fabricated one.

The court also said that the names were not added by the metropolitan magistrate as he had no "axe to grind" against the convicts and moreover, each page of the document contained the signature of the victim.
"If she was in a position to affix her signature on each and every page of her dying declaration made before the magistrate, she certainly could have written down the names of the accused persons," it said.