Taking a serious view of the allegations made by the victim, now a 21-year-old, the Delhi High Court has quashed a 2016 verdict of a trial court, acquitting her father in the case.

Sex education in school helped a 13-year-old girl understand that her father’s behaviour when she was alone with him since she was six years old, constituted rape.

Taking a serious view of the allegations made by the victim, now a 21-year-old, the Delhi High Court has quashed a 2016 verdict of a trial court, acquitting the father in the case. The FIR states the father is blind and living separately from his wife since 2004.

The victim in her statement said she had no memory of when the sexual assaults began. She narrated several instances, from 2004-2005 till 2011, when she alleged he had sexually assaulted her. In 2006, she was sent to study in a hostel.

Around 2010, when she came home for holidays, her father would sexually assault her. In her statement, she stated that due to lack of sex education, she began to think that she would become pregnant, which led to a lot of stress and mental trauma. It was in 2011, when she went to a different hostel and had sex education that she came to know what happened with her was rape and sexual assault.

In June 2016, she disclosed what happened to her to her mother and brother.

The September 2016 verdict of the trial court, however, held that the allegations had been made against a blind person and it was not possible for him to commit the alleged acts. The trial court also questioned the woman for not seeking police assistance or discussing the issue with anyone for several years.

“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,” Justice Sachdeva remarked.

Justice Sachdeva said, “The trial court has erred in not appreciating that the accused is the father of the prosecutrix [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.”

Justice Sachdeva remitted the case back to the trial court for the framing of appropriate charges against the father.