Ghaziabad: A minor who spotted a man sexually assaulting his friend was assaulted and killed by the same man within hours, his body dumped in a forested area. Eight years after the crime, a special Pocso court on Monday handed the accused a life imprisonment after the testimony of the surviving friend nailed him in the case.The eight-year-old boy went missing in Oct 2018, two days before his body was recovered from the Girdharpur forest area. His father filed an FIR at Kavinagar police station on charges of sodomy and murder against a distant relative. During the probe, police found the boy had inadvertently witnessed the relative sexually assaulting his 11-year-old friend, and was killed to prevent disclosure. A chargesheet was filed on Dec 16 that year, and charges were framed on March 11, 2020.Though there was no direct eyewitness to the murder, the court said a complete chain of circumstantial evidence established the crime. “The deceased saw the accused raping his friend. The accused immediately followed him, thinking that he would disclose it to everyone, unless stopped. Subsequently, the body of the minor was recovered from the Girdharpur forest. The motive, the last seen theory, the recovery of the body, the FSL report and the unequivocal denial of the prosecution’s allegations by the accused in his statement under Section 313 CrPC, all constitute a complete chain of evidence which fully establishes the guilt of the accused,” the court held.The prosecution presented 15 witnesses, including the surviving boy, four relatives of the deceased’s family, police investigators and two doctors, including the one who conducted medico-legal tests on the survivor and another who performed the autopsy on the deceased, SPP Sanjeev Bakharwa said.The case rested heavily on the testimony of the 11-year-old survivor, who remained consistent across statements given to the police, a magistrate, and the court. The court designated him a sterling witness — a legal standard applied when a victim’s account is found reliable enough to sustain a conviction without corroboration.“The survivor has confirmed the aggravated penetrative sexual assault by the accused. He is not only a witness to the sexual assault on himself but is also an eyewitness to the last sighting of the deceased before his death,” the court observed. In his statement under Section 164 CrPC, the boy confirmed seeing the accused running after the deceased, directly establishing both motive and the last-seen theory in the chain of circumstantial evidence.Additional district and Sessions judge Deepika Tiwari sentenced the convict, originally from Bihar, to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000 under Section 302 IPC for murder, 20 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000 under Sections 5/6 of the Pocso Act for the sexual assault, and two years with a fine of Rs 3,000 under Section 201 IPC for destruction of evidence..
