Minor’s Gang Rape: Allahabad High Court Upholds Conviction

By Rajesh Pandey

The Allahabad High Court has upheld the conviction of a man in connection with a 1979 gang-rape case concerning a minor.

However, the court reduced his substantive sentence from 7.5 years to 4 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI), noting the 43-year pendency of the criminal appeal and the surviving convict’s age, which is 71 years right now.

With this, Justice Santosh Rai partly allowed the criminal appeal filed by the accused, Ram Swarup.

He was directed to surrender and serve out the remainder of the sentence.

On the intervening night of October 31 and November 1, 1979, the minor prosecutrix, aged between 15 and 17 years, was forcefully abducted at knife-point by three co-villagers – Kali Charan, Ram Lal and Ram Swarup (appellant before the HC).

She was taken by train through Shahjahanpur to a vacant house in Tilhar, where she was confined for a week and repeatedly subjected to gang-rape.

Thereafter, she was brought to Bilsanda to see a fair (mela), where, on the intervening night of October 31 and November 1, 1979, she was rescued by a sub-inspector.

Following this, a chargesheet was filed against the three accused in 1983; the court of the Assistant Sessions Judge, Pilibhit, found all three of them guilty, and they were sentenced to a maximum of seven and a half years of imprisonment.

The convicts challenged the verdict before the High Court in 1983.

During the pendency of their appeal, co-accused Kali Charan and Ram Lal passed away, and the appeal stood abated relating to them in 2022.

The case survived solely for the accused, Ram Swarup, who was 27 years old at trial and is now 71.

During the course of the hearing, the accused’s counsel did not press the appeal on the question of conviction any further, and confined his submissions to the question of sentence alone.

It was submitted that this is a fit case in which the sentence awarded by the trial court deserves to be suitably moderated in exercise of the discretion available to this court, while maintaining the conviction, and the appellant should be released on probation.

The high court, however, rejected this submission,n observing, “In such cases, where the victim’s testimony is the bedrock of the conviction, showing undue sympathy to the convict would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

Sentencing is not merely a retributive exercise;e, it must serve as a deterrent to the offender and others, and reflect the legislative intent to protect the vulnerable”.

Terming the offence as ‘heinous’, the court added that the social impact of sexual violence is profound, and granting the benefit of probation in a case of this magnitude would be counter-productive to the societal interest and the principles of criminal justice.

The court, however, noted that section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as it stood at the relevant time, allowed the courts to reduce the sentence below the statutory seven-year minimum for adequate and special reasons.

The court took into account the fact that the occurrence is of the year 1979, i.e., about 47 years old,ld and the appeal itself has remained pending in this court for about 43 years for no fault of the appellant.

The bench also noted that the appellant, who was about 27 years of age at the time of trial, is presently about 71 years old, and there is nothing on record to show that he has, either before or after this occurrence, been involved in any other criminal case.

Taking the cumulative effect of these circumstances, and being satisfied that they constitute ‘adequate and special reasons’ within the meaning of the proviso to section 376(1) of IPC, the court in its judgment dated July 14 said that while the conviction must be maintained, the substantive sentence deserves to be moderated.