PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has upheld the conviction of a juvenile person by a child protection court for sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl.

Justice Shahid Khan of a single-member bench ruled that the impugned judgement of the trial court in the case was based on proper appraisal of facts and circumstances coupled with the evidence recorded.

It added that the judgement did not suffer from any illegality, irregularity or misreading of evidence and therefore, it did not need its interference.

The appellant was named in an FIR registered at the Tehkal police station in Peshawar on Nov 17, 2019, under Section 376 (rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 50 (exposure to seduction) and Section 53 (sexual abuse) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act.

The child protection court had convicted the appellant on March 16, 2022, and sentenced him to five years simple imprisonment and imposed a Rs1 million fine on him.

Rules trial court’s verdict didn’t ‘suffer from any illegality, misreading of evidence’

The trial court had also declared that on the completion of three years sentence of imprisonment, the remaining two years period of jail term would be suspended under Section 15-C of the Juvenile Justice System Act, 2018, subject to the convict’s good conduct and that he should be set free on probation after the furnishing of a surety bond of Rs50,000.

The complainant in the case was the minor girl’s mother, who reported the assault to the police.

The complainant had said that her four-year-old daughter had stepped out of home to play with friends but when she returned, she was crying and told her that her stomach ached.

The complainant said that she noticed signs of rape while changing her daughter’s clothes and took her to a hospital for medical examination and aid.

The next day, the child was produced before a local magistrate for recording her statement. She named the appellant, who happened to be her neighbour, as the assaulter.

The appellant’s counsel contended that the account of the prosecution was based on the account of the minor assault victim and that it was not ‘confidence-inspiring’.

He argued that the trial court while relying on the said evidence had ‘fallen in error’.

The lawyer said that it was unwise to base the conviction on the solitary statement of a child witness.

He contended that the appellant was initially not nominated in the FIR for the commission of the offence and after due deliberation and consultation he was named in the case, which had weakened the prosecution version.

An assistant advocate general, Syed Asif Jalal, and the counsel for the complainant, Shahab Ali, told the court that the circumstantial evidence coupled with medical evidence produced in the case supported each other.

They added that the medical evidence substantiated that the minor girl was subjected to the illegal act of sexual assault and that no good ground existed to believe that the appellant had falsely been implicated in the case.

The bench ruled that the oral evidence found its positive support from the circumstantial evidence as the assault victim’s clothes as well as medical evidence ‘spoke loud and clear’ about the commission of the offence.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2022