JABALPUR/BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh High Court has upheld the sentence handed down to a rape accused despite the survivor herself turning hostile in the court. The accused Rafiq Khan, 45, will now go to jail after Madhya Pradesh high court rejected his criminal revision petition.

Khan was convicted of rape 21 years ago by a trial court in Sehore and sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. He had approached the high court challenging the lower court order , saying all prosecution witnesses in the case, including the rape survivor had turned hostile and refused to identify him as rapist.

Justice J P Gupta, while upholding the sessions court order on Saturday, said, “The evidence of a prosecution witness cannot be rejected in to merely because the prosecution chose to treat him as hostile and cross examined him. The evidence of such witness cannot be treated as effaced or washed off the record altogether but the same can be accepted to the extent his version is found to be dependable on a careful scrutiny thereof.”

The judge further pointed out that medical examination of the complainant had confirmed rape and the accused’s medical examination carried out soon after an FIR was lodged against him by the survivor and her uncle on October 29, 1996, found spots of semen on his underwear and doctor declared him capable of sexual intercourse. tnn

