Man Is Sentenced To 15 Years In Jail For Raping A Mentally Disabled Girl

In this country, a man was given a 15-year prison term for raping a girl with mental disabilities in 2018, recording the incident, and sharing it with others.

The court ruled that the rape victim should receive compensation in the amount of Rs 10.5 lakh, noting that the crime was premeditated and that the only reason it was committed was to satisfy an unnatural passion.

Anil Kumar, 35, was convicted for the offences of rape and criminal intimidation under the IPC, besides Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act (punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault) and 67 B of the IT Act (transmitting material depicting children, including nude or sexually explicit pictures of self, if a child).

Pronouncing the judgement last month, Additional Sessions Judge Sunil Kumar said, “It appears from the record that apart from gratification of unnatural lust, there was no other motive behind the convict’s conduct. This incident was premeditated in nature and not one that happened in the spur of the moment.”

The defendant was also given a Rs 20,000 fine by the court.

The judge said rape is not merely a physical assault, it is often destructive of the whole personality of the victim. While “a murderer destroys the physical body of his victim a rapist degrades the very soul of the helpless female”, the judge said.

“The courts, therefore, shoulder a great responsibility while trying an accused on charges of rape. They must deal with such cases with utmost sensitivity,” the court said.Rejecting the defence counsel’s argument that the convict was from a weak economic background and should be given a lesser sentence, it said, “A person’s poverty, by itself, does not formulate a mitigating ground, unless the person’s poverty drove him to commit that crime.”

The court ruled that in this case, the convict’s “perverse mental condition” rather than his financial constraints drove him to perpetrate the crime.

The court said that rape and other crimes against women are on the rise, and that it is ironic that while we are celebrating women’s rights across the board, we have little to no regard for their honour.

“It is a sad reflection on the attitude of indifference of the society towards the violation of human dignity of the victims of sex crimes. We must remember that a rapist not only violates the victim’s privacy and personal integrity but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process,” it added.

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