Bombay HC upholds jail term to ex-Army officer for sexually assaulting minor: ‘Her instinct…must be believed’

In January 2024, the AFT bench comprising Justice Shailendra Shukla and Vice-Admiral Abhay Raghunath Karve had also directed the dismissed officer, who was on bail, to surrender and undergo the remaining jail term. The AFT had refused his prayer to commute his sentence due to his health.

In his complaint, the minor’s father had stated that on February 1, 2020, after he wished the appellant as per protocol, the latter inquired about the former’s well-being and his family members.

The father told the petitioner about his two minor children, an 11-year-old daughter and a younger son. The petitioner sought to meet them, after which their father went back to his own residence and brought his children to where the petitioner was. The petitioner had asked the minor girl a few general questions, and her father said that he knew palmistry and could read horoscopes.

Thereafter, as per the complainant’s father, the petitioner took the girl’s hand and started to study it and later asked her father to bring a pen. When the father went out to bring the pen along with his son, the petitioner had touched the minor girl’s thigh, making her uncomfortable. He allegedly asked the girl as to whether he could kiss her as a friend, and then she pushed him back.

After the father came back and saw her crying, he inquired about the incident and lodged a complaint for offences punishable under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, and a provision of the Army Act.

The GCM convicted him in March 2021. The AFT upheld the GCM’s conviction last year, prompting the officer to approach the high court.

Advocates Saakshi Jha and Ujjwal Gandhi for the petitioner submitted that their client interacted with the minor girl as a “father figure” without any ill will or bad intention, and the entire story was “cooked up”.

However, the high court noted that the minor’s demonstration in court about the specific manner in which the accused behaved with her once her father left the room “was depicted with immense clarity”.

“Thus, her statement inspires confidence that she has narrated the incident correctly. Furthermore, her instinct of identifying a bad touch of the petitioner must be believed,” Justice Gokhale for the bench stated.

“The girl met the petitioner for the very first time, and there was no reason for the Petitioner to hold her hand and read her palm even under the pretext of reading her horoscope, touch her thigh and request to kiss her. The girl immediately sensed a bad touch and reported as such to her father instantly,” the high court observed.

Rejecting the plea, it noted that there was “no infirmity” in the findings of the GCM and the AFT. “We do not find any violation of fundamental rights of the petitioner,” the court noted.