‘Consensual’: Kerala HC reduces sentence of man convicted of rape of minor

Last update:October 24, 2024, 3:20 pm IST

The court emphasized that, “In criminal jurisprudence, the concept of punishment has evolved from a retributive approach to a reformative approach.”

The court, presided over by Justice CS Sudha, clarified that the court does not in any way justify the act committed by the accused. (Representative Image)

The Kerala High Court reduced the sentence of a rape convict, Iliyas, from seven years to one year, taking a lenient approach after noting that the convict, who was 19 at the time of the incident, and the minor survivor, were in a of preventive detention. consensual relationship.

The incident occurred in 2011, when the 13-year-old survivor voluntarily accompanied the convict to Ooty, where the alleged crime took place. The prosecution alleged that the accused had instigated the survivor, a class seven student, to accompany him to Ooty, where he later raped her. The accused was arrested after the girl’s family traced her to Ooty and reported her missing. The Sessions Court, in 2016, convicted him under Section 376 of the IPC, sentencing him to seven years in prison. This decision was challenged by the defendant before the High Court.

The court, presided over by Justice CS Sudha, clarified that the court in no way justifies the act committed by the accused, however, taking into account the circumstances of the case, it stated that “In criminal jurisprudence the concept of punishment has evolved from a retributive approach for a reformative approach. The facts and circumstances of the case call for a lenient approach against A1 (accused), who was just 19 years old at the time of the incident.”

During the trial, it was also revealed that the survivor admitted to having voluntarily accompanied the accused to Ooty with the intention of getting married, despite her father’s opposition to the relationship. The trial court acquitted the accused under Section 366A of the IPC, finding no evidence of compulsion or deceit. The High Court, therefore, observed: “This is not a case where A1, by mistake or fraud, lured PW2 out of his legal guardianship.”

However, the court reiterated that the survivor’s age made her consent invalid, citing that she was a minor at the time of the incident. The court noted that the survivor, who was 17 years of age at the time of her interrogation before the trial court, had sent letters to the accused expressing her continued desire to be with him. “There is no case for PW2 that she was forced or seduced into illicit sexual intercourse with another person. Her statement shows that she voluntarily joined A1,” the court observed.

The court invoked the provision of Section 376(1) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which, before its amendment in 2013, allowed courts to impose a sentence less than the prescribed minimum of seven years if there were “suitable and special reasons”, highlighting that “the legislator himself contemplated such a situation and hence the reason why such a provision was introduced into the statute, despite a minimum sentence of seven years having been prescribed”.

Referring to the Supreme Court decision in Sukhwinder Singh v. State of Punjab (2000) where it has been held that when the survivor herself is a consenting party, the proviso to Section 376 of IPC cannot be ignored. The High Court concluded that “the facts and circumstances of the case constitute an appropriate and special reason to invoke the clause”, especially taking into account the defendant’s age and his expression of remorse.

As a result, the court changed the sentence imposed by the trial court and reduced it to a simple one-year prison term.