Man gets 7 yrs in jail for raping 12-yr-old girl

A man, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl, has been sentenced to seven years in jail by a Delhi court which relied on her testimony despite her varied statements, saying any child who has undergone such a trauma would not like to recall the incident.
Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Sharma awarded the sentence to Ashok Jha, who was convicted of the offences of raping a girl under IPC and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and also imposed a fine of Rs 36,000 on him.
The judge, while convicting Jha, had termed the conduct of the victim as "highly natural" despite her varied statements during examination in the court.

"The plight and the mental trauma which the victim must have faced can be well understood considering her tender age. It was only in the end that she reasoned as to why she was giving varied answers i.E. She never wanted to remember the incident," it had said.
The court had observed that any child who has undergone such a traumatic experience "would not like to recapitulate the incident as it would be much more traumatic and can even go a step forward to damage her psyche in future. Thus, her conduct during examination was not unnatural but highly natural".

The court held Ashok Jha, the victim's neighbour, guilty of offences under sections 376 (2)(f) (raping a woman who is under 12 years of age), 451 (house-trespass) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC and section 4 (sexual assault) of POCSO Act.

According to the prosecution, on December 14, 2012, the girl was sleeping in her house when Jha raped and threatened to kill her.
The complaint lodged by the victim's mother, who was not at home when the incident took place, had said that the girl was in her shanty with her two siblings and when she returned, the victim told her about it. The man was then arrested.

The court, while convicting him, had also noted that "an attempt was made to make the girl hostile initially, but with the sustained and positive questioning by prosecutor and the court, the truth was extracted from her".
It had said the possibility of her being tutored to mitigate the act of the convict cannot be ruled out.
During the trial, the man had pleaded innocence and claimed he was falsely implicated.