New Delhi: A Delhi court has convicted a man for sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl in 2015, saying the prosecution had connected the dots and established the chain of events to prove the accused’s guilt. Additional sessions judge Sandeep Gupta was hearing the case against the man, who had been booked for kidnapping, outraging a woman’s modesty and aggravated sexual assault. Judge Gupta said the minor and her mother had sufficiently and satisfactorily rendered a narration of the alleged incident. In an order dated Oct 29, the court said the minor rendered a coherent story that when she was playing in a park, the accused offered her sweets, took her to his house and sexually assaulted her. Special public prosecutor Shrawan Kumar argued before the court that the accused’s claim of false implication was uncorroborated and inconsistent, and therefore liable to be rejected. While convicting the man of the charges, the court scheduled the hearing on the quantum of sentence for a later date. The judge observed that minor discrepancies or embellishments that do not alter the core of the allegations cannot be used to discredit the testimony of a sexual assault survivor. Holding that the prosecution had proved that the child was sexually assaulted by the accused, the judge concluded that the offences of aggravated sexual assault under Section 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act stood established.
