60-yr-old gets jail for sexual assault of minor boy in 2018

A special court designated under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act sentenced a 60year-old man to five years’ rigorous imprisonment on Tuesday, for sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy from his Chembur neighbourhood in 2018. While special judge under the POCSO Act Priti Kumar convicted the man under sections of the POCSO Act, she acquitted him of the offence of unnatural intercourse under Section 377 of the IPC. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on the man, a former firefighter.

Deposing before court, the child said he had gone to the adjacent lane near his house and called out to his friend who would go to the house of the assailant to watch television. The child told the court that the man told him his friend was inside the house watching TV and eating chocolate and invited him to come inside. When he went inside but did not see his friend, the man told him, the friend was using the washroom, the child deposed. Thereafter, the man closed the door and sexually assaulted him. When the child tried to escape, falling in the process, the man pulled him back. However, the child said he had jerked away his hand and managed to flee.

Special Public Prosecutor Veena Shelar said that while medical reports had not shown injuries to the child’s private parts, they had noted swelling. The defence of the accused was that the complaint was a false one as he had issues with the child and his friend playing cricket outside his house and the ball hitting the window panes of his home.