Mumbai: A special court acquitted a 35-year-old man who spent over six years behind bars on the charge of kidnapping and raping a minor in 2018, holding that the prosecution failed to produce “trustworthy evidence” to show that she was underage and that there was no lapse in the handling of DNA samples.The prosecution said the victim was 14 at the time and the man, who was known to her family, took her to UP, lived with her for months and impregnated her. But the court said she gave the “appearance” of being an adult, and that the record didn’t indicate that she had been kidnapped. It noted that the two first lived together for a few days in Mumbai, where she even celebrated her birthday along with neighbours, and then resided in UP’s Prayagraj district for about five months. It said till the girl’s father turned up at their house in UP, no complaint was filed. “…No endeavour was made by the girl either to shout or to get rescued from the clutches of the accused. If all these attending circumstances are considered, it is hardly difficult to accept that she was kidnapped,” said special judge N D Khose. The court found the documentary proof of age—the birth certificate showing her date of birth as April 15, 2004—to be legally insufficient, noting that it was registered only in May 2019, nearly 15 years later and months after she went missing. “The birth certificate… loses its credibility,” the judge said. The court examined forensic evidence, including a DNA report stating that the man and the girl were the biological parents of an aborted foetus. It noted lapses by police in preserving and forwarding the biological samples. “There is nothing in the evidence of the investigating officer showing that necessary care was taken during the period when DNA samples of the victim and the foetus were lying at the police station.” Records showed that the samples were kept at the police station for two days before being sent to a laboratory and the investigating officer admitted that he did not know the temperature required for their preservation. The girl went missing after she stepped out of her home to go to a toilet nearby on Nov 17, 2018. The prosecution said the suspect, who was known to the family through business dealings with her father, lured her away after meeting her at a fair, took her first to a room in Mumbai and later to Madhavpur in Prayagraj district, where they lived together for several months. After she was traced in March 2019, she was rescued and brought back to Mumbai, while the man was arrested on Nov 24 that year.
