Panaji: An 83-year-old man has gone to Supreme Court appealing against his conviction and 10 year sentence in a 2012 case where he raped a 9-year-old girl who was his neighbour. The case came up before Supreme Court this week and has been listed again next month.The Bombay high court in Jan upheld his conviction and 10-year imprisonment observing that it does not find his age of 83 years to be a mitigating circumstance to reduce the sentence in such offences.The court also observed that it cannot also turn a Nelson’s eye to the age of the survivor and the ordeal she has undergone. The high court had also rejected his appeal to stay its judgment for six weeks, citing the gravity of the offence and evidence presented in the case.The conviction was first handed down by the Goa children’s court in 2018. The case came to light when the survivor disclosed the incident to a friend who then informed her parents leading to a timely complaint being lodged.“The survivor in the present case has confided in the child of her age at the available opportunity and which in turn was communicated to her mother who without any loss of time and after properly ascertaining from the survivor has lodged the complaint…,” the court held.“In the present case, the evidence of the survivor is unimpeachable and therefore, assuming that the prosecution has not examined the daughter of the appellant, for the reasons best known, the same will not be fatal to the prosecution’s case,” the court held.The HC had held that the trial court had rightly convicted him of the offences for which he was charged for and that this was proved beyond reasonable doubt by cogent evidence.
