PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has acquitted a juvenile person by setting aside the sentence of life awarded to him by a child protection court for sexually assaulting a minor boy.

A bench consisting of Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim accepted an appeal by the convict declaring the prosecution has failed to prove its case against him.

A child protection court in Mardan district had convicted him on Feb 10, 2022, and sentenced him under Section 377 (unnatural offence) of the Pakistan Penal Code to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million. He was around 14 at the time of committing the offence in 2020.

The trial court had also sentenced him to seven years simple imprisonment along with Rs1 million fine under section 53 (sexual abuse) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act.

Declares prosecution failed to prove charge

The appellant was charged in an FIR registered at a police station in Mardan district on March 10, 2020, by the uncle of the alleged assault victim.

The complainant had said that his eight-year-old nephew had gone out of his house and on return, he disclosed that the appellant, who was his neighbour, had taken him to a house and sexually assaulted him.

Advocate Umer Zafran appeared for the appellant and contended that his client was falsely implicated in the case and there was no evidence on record against him.

He contended that the medical examination did not prove that the child was subjected to sexual abuse.

The bench observed that it was the primary duty of the prosecution to bring home the charge against the accused beyond any reasonable shadow of doubt, and most particularly in cases in which capital punishment is provided, the prosecution was under statutory obligation to bring on record unimpeachable and cogent evidence, which should satisfy the judicial mind of the court with regard to the proof of charge levelled by the prosecution against the accused indicted in the case.

It observed that the boy had admitted that he was accompanied by two other children and they were his neighbours, but none of them was produced before the investigation officer for recording their statements under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The court observed that the complainant during cross-examination insisted that he and mother of the assault victim had examined his body for the presence of the marks of violence, which he didn’t find.

It added that it held no appeal to a prudent mind that in the upper portion of the house in question, the family of the accused lived and that the accused took the boy there and sexually assaulted him on the ground floor.

The bench observed that the age of the appellant was recorded as 14-15 years by the trial court while framing the charge, but no evidence was produced by the prosecution to show that at the time of occurrence, he was capable of committing the sex crime.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2022