Kanpur: Special Pocso Act court on Thursday acquitted a man of charges of sexually assaulting a minor girl, observing that the police had wrongly implicated him after a defective investigation in the case.The judicial official Pawan Kumar Rai in his order dismissed the police’s claim that accused Amin Layal was the man who had allegedly physically exploited the minor girl.The judge expressed serious displeasure over the police investigation and said that the investigation officer did not take appropriate steps to identify the accused during investigation.“He simply leveled the charges against an innocent person. Such careless and defective investigation pushed an innocent person to the jail and he had to spent five years behind the bars for no offence,” the judge said.The presiding officer in his order also ordered the police commissioner and district magistrate to conduct an inquiry against then police station in-charge Vinod Kumar Singh and his superior supervisor and take stern action against them.The case was registered in 2021, when an advocate lodged an FIR at the Bidhanoo police station and alleged that a person identified as Vickey had physically exploited a minor girl.The police arrested a man, Amin Layal, as the main accused and without checking his identity started legal proceedings against him. The station police officer, Vinod Kumar Singh, without conducting identification parade filed a charge sheet in the court.A major turn came during the trial when the victim during her examination in the court refused to identify him.Parents of the victim too contradicted the prosecution story stating that at the time of Amin’s arrest they had clearly said that this person was not Vickey and the police had arrested a wrong person.The girl’s mother told the court that the real Vickey was her neigbour who was a married and middle-aged man.The defense layer Mohd Salim presented his client, Amin’s school certificates (marksheets of class IX and Xth) Aadhar Card, bank passbook and proved that arrested person wasn’t Vickey. against whom the FIR was lodged.It was ascertained that on the day of incident Amin was not in the Kanpur, and was in Varanasi.During cross examination, the investigation officer conceded that he had not conducted identification of Amin.The judicial official ordered Amin to submit two personal bonds of Rs 20,000 each and directed the jail authorities to release him after formalities.
