Ahmedabad: A special Pocso court in Ahmedabad on Friday sentenced a man to 20 years in prison for raping his minor stepdaughter, an ordeal that resulted in the birth of a child.Special judge N H Vasvelia, delivering the verdict, also imposed a fine of Rs 1.05 lakh on the convict and directed the state govt to pay Rs 4.5 lakh in compensation to the survivor.The case came to light in Sep 2024, when the girl’s mother approached the Khokhra police and lodged a complaint against her own husband in his 30s, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her 13-year-old daughter in April that year. The complaint followed the discovery that the minor was pregnant.The accused, who evaded arrest for months, was eventually arrested in March 2025, by which time the girl had already delivered a baby boy. He was booked for rape under IPC as well as the Pocso Act.The trial took an unusual turn when both, the survivor and her mother turned hostile, declining to support the prosecution’s version of events in court.Despite this setback, the prosecution’s case held firm on the strength of scientific evidence. DNA analysis conducted by the Directorate of Forensic Science in Gandhinagar established conclusively that the accused was the biological father of the child born to the minor.The court leaned on the statutory presumptions built into the Pocso Act, which shift the burden onto the accused in such cases, and noted that he failed to offer any evidence to rebut this presumption.Delivering his order, the judge did not mince words about the betrayal of trust at the heart of the case. “The victim was a child residing under the care, protection and authority of the accused. Instead of acting as a guardian, the accused exploited his position of dominant authority. Such conduct strikes at the very foundation of the trust reposed in a parent or parental figure and has the potential to cause lasting emotional and psychological trauma to the child,” the judge stated in the order.
