Around three weeks after a special Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act court raised doubts about the veracity of a birth certificate produced by lawyers of a rape accused during trial of a rape and atrocity case, the registrar of Rajkot district and sessions court Wednesday filed a complaint against an unknown person for allegedly tampering with birth and death register of the village the victim hailed from. Based on a complaint filed by the registrar, Archana Thacker, University police station in Rajkot city booked unidentified person under Sections 336(2) (forgery), 336 (3) (forgery with intent to use so forged record for cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable security) and 340 (2) (using a forged document as genuine) of Bharatiya Nayaya Sanhita. In her complaint, Thacker said that recently, during the trial of a minor’s rape case, the prosecution had relied on someone else’s birth certificate to build a case that the victim was a 17 years old when she was allegedly kidnapped and raped by the accused in July 2018. As per the prosecution’s case, the 21-year-old accused, who used to work in a medical store located on the premises where the minor girl was working as labourer, had befriended her and then kidnapped her after promising her marriage. According to the judgment delivered on July 18, 2024, the defence lawyer had stated that the birth certificate he produced in court had been issued on the basis of an entry in the birth and death register of the village panchayat where the girl was born. The lawyer argued that name in the birth records produced by the prosecution in the form of the girl’s school leaving certificate and entry in the general register of the school didn’t match with the relevant entry in the birth and death register maintained by village panchayat. The lawyer said the prosecution had built a case that the girl was a minor by producing birth certificate of her sister. However, the court of J D Suthar, special judge of POCSO court in Rajkot, rejected the argument stating that name of the girl in the birth certificate produced by the defence appeared to have been added at a later date and thus, the birth certificate was prima facie forged. The court, on July 18, convicted the accused for repeatedly raping the minor as well as under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and sentenced him to life imprisonment. “The defence produced the original birth certificate of the victim during deposition of the victim. How could the defence lay its hands on the original birth certificate? Who wrote two different names of one person in the original government records, when and for what purpose? It clearly emerges that the original government records have been tempered with,” it observed. It also directed the court registrar to file a police complaint about the alleged tampering with records of the girl’s birth. Incidentally, the prosecution had also examined the revenue clerk of village as a defence witness, who produced copies of relevant page of birth and death register of the village. M G Vasava, Inspector of Gandhigram police station, said, “We have registered an offence against an unidentified person for allegedly forging a government document.”
