know the full case The Punjab and Haryana High Court recently commuted the death sentence of a man for sexually assaulting his 17-year-old daughter to 30 years imprisonment. A division bench of Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill and Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi found sufficient evidence to uphold his conviction. The bench also said that the death penalty cannot be justified by calling the case ‘rarest of the rare’ case of rape. Needless to say, the accused has committed one of the most serious and heinous crimes by repeatedly sexually assaulting his minor daughter and impregnating her and no leniency in the matter of sentence would be required. At the same time, we find that the case cannot be called ‘rarest of the rare’ to justify the death penalty.
In 2020, the victim, along with her grandparents, had complained to the police that her father had started raping her after her mother’s death. As a result, she became pregnant. The victim later gave birth to a child. In 2023, a trial court in Palwal found the accused guilty and sentenced him to death. The case then reached the High Court for confirmation of the death sentence. The convict also filed an appeal arguing that he had been falsely implicated as he had snatched the victim’s phone, which was given to her by the boy she loved. He claimed that the father of the child born to the victim was the same boy. He argued that the DNA profile matched that of the child anyway, as he was the child’s grandfather. The High Court, in its judgment, said that sufficient medical evidence had been produced by the prosecution regarding the minor victim becoming pregnant.
The court found that the victim had clearly mentioned that her father had sexually abused her for about 4 years. The court said that when the victim stepped into the witness box as PW-10 during the trial, she again reiterated the same and categorically stated that the accused had repeated and forced sexual intercourse with her for about 4 years and she became pregnant. It rejected the defence’s argument that the father of the child born to the victim was the boy whom the victim loved. The court said that ‘the fact that the victim herself has admitted her relationship with the scrap dealer, as also admitted by the grandfather of the victim, cannot be taken to mean that in fact the father of the child born to the victim was the dealer and not the accused. The fact that the victim herself admitted that she knew the dealer.
