Man rapes two minor daughters: Delhi HC upholds 10-year jail term

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has upheld a lower court verdict awarding 10 years jail term to a man for raping his two minor daughters saying that “absolutely no motive” can be attributed to the victims that they implicated their father. Justice Pratibha Rani, refusing to show any leniency to the convict, referred to the observations made by the apex court in a case and said there can never be “more graver and heinous crime” than the father raping his daughters. [caption id=“attachment_1772929” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational Image. PTI[/caption] The court lent credence to the testimonies of the victim sisters, whose mother did not live with them, and condoned the delay in reporting the matter to the police by the eldest victim saying she must have done it to avoid a situation where she and her three siblings are rendered homeless. “Perhaps in a hope to have a roof on their head, ‘X’ (eldest victim) continued to bear the repeated sexual assaults of her own father with the hope that at least her three younger sisters are safe. “The mere fact that she raised her voice when she saw her father attempting to rape her younger sister (‘Y’) and she sent her sister to school, shows that even at that stage, she had no intention to lodge FIR against her own father,” it said. Ram Singh, who used to live with his four daughters here, had been sexually assaulting the eldest daughter of 15 years of age and later, a complaint was lodged to the police when he raped another 11-year-old daughter on September 20, 2007. Dealing with facts of the case, the court, in its 8-page order, said the convict married twice and both his wives deserted him and then “to satisfy his lust, first, he sexually exploited his daughter ‘X’ aged about 15 years and thereafter set his eyes on his second daughter ‘Y’ who was just 11 years old at that time….” The matter went to police as the eldest victim failed to protect her younger sibling from their own father, it said, adding the convict married again after the mother of the victims left him and went to Nepal. Upholding the trial court’s verdict, the bench said, “Long silence by ‘X’ in not reporting the matter to the police when she was being repeatedly raped by her own father, has to be examined in the light that their own father who was under a legal obligation to protect them, was a predator.” “In the backdrop of …settled legal principles of law, if the testimonies of (victims) ‘X’ and ‘Y’, who both are victims of lust of their own father, are examined, I find that both of them had absolutely no motive against their father to falsely implicate him in this case. “It may be mentioned here that the four daughters of the appellant have been rendered homeless just because ‘X’ on seeing her father not sparing even his 11-year-old daughter (‘Y’), was compelled to take action against her own father…,” the court observed. Dismissing the appeal of the father, the court further said, “It is his own daughters, who have stood against him, knowing fully well that their act would lead to further disaster, as they had no mother or step mother to take care of them nor any neighbor would come forward in a cluster to feed them or to take care of them.” PTI