High Court of Judicature at Bombay (Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction) — Cr. Appeal No. 302 of 2024 (R.M. Joshi, J.; 16 December 2025): appeal against the judgment and order dated 2 February 2023 in POCSO Special Case No. 99 of 2017 convicting a father, principally on the sole testimony of his minor daughter, of rape under Section 376(2)(n) IPC along with offences under the POCSO Act and Sections 323, 509 and 506(II) IPC, with seven years' imprisonment and a fine of Rs.1,000/- per offence. Testing the testimony against the Supreme Court's 'sterling witness' standard (Nirmal Premkumar, relied on, reproducing Rai Sandeep and Krishan Kumar Malik, applied; Ganesan, Vipin @ Lalla and Hari Singh referred to), the Court found: (i) no complaint of sexual abuse when the victim first reached the informant on 16.12.2016 — the allegation surfaced only on 19.12.2016; (ii) in Court she specified incidents of intercourse on 19 and 20 December 2016, whereas the history given to the Medical Officer recorded no incident on 16 December and fixed the last intercourse on 17 December, an incident never disclosed to the informant; (iii) the claim of abuse over the preceding two years at intervals of two-to-three days conflicted with her cross-examination admission that she had lived with her grandmother at the native place in Uttar Pradesh till about a year before; (iv) same-day medical examination after the alleged 19.12.2016 assault showed no fresh external injury, and the Medical Officer conceded that hymenal rupture can occur for many reasons; (v) occurrence in a 10 x 10 sq.ft. room shared with the Accused's second wife and four sons was held practically impossible; and (vi) the cross-examination reference to a native-place incident was a voluntary statement, not an admission of guilt. Reiterating that even in POCSO prosecutions the burden of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt lies on the prosecution (the Section 29 presumption shifting the burden only after the fundamental facts are proved), and that falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus has no application in Indian law, the Court disbelieved the allegations of sexual intercourse by the father while accepting, on PW-1's testimony and the medical findings, that the girl had been abused and physically assaulted. The conviction under the POCSO offences and Section 376(2)(n) IPC was held unsafe to confirm and set aside; the conviction under Sections 323 and 506 IPC was confirmed; the Appellant, eight years in custody, was ordered released forthwith if not required in any other crime. Appeal partly allowed; pending applications disposed of. (The judgment records no separate disposal of the Section 509 IPC conviction.)
