New Delhi (Sputnik) — India's Delhi High Court has overturned the acquittal of a man accused of incestuous rape, ordering the lower court, which had earlier set the perpetrator free, to reframe charges against him and proceed with a retrial, according to The Hindu newspaper.
The High Court quashed the acquittal order which was passed in September 2016.
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The accused father of the victim is blind and has been living away from his wife since 2004. He began abusing his daughter when she used to stay over with him alone. She was just six years old when the sexual abuse started.
The High Court found fault with the lower court's observation that the father of the girl was incapable of sexually abusing his daughter as he was blind. Furthermore, the High Court also faulted the lower court's opinion that as the girl had neither approached the police nor told anyone for a long time of the incestuous rape she endured through on continual basis, the prosecution's case was untenable.
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"A child who is subjected to sexual abuse and assault from a tender age of six and which assault continues till she is 14 years of age, would not even be aware that she is being abused or any offence is happening," the High Court judge said.
Coming down heavily on the lower court, the judge remarked: "The trial court has erred in not appreciating that the accused is the father of the prosecutrix [the girl] and was in a dominating position and keeping in the view the relationship, it would not be abnormal for the prosecutrix not to make a complaint against her own father."
