Noida: A Bihar man, charged with sexual assault of a minor in 2017, was acquitted after the complainant’s family remained untraceable despite repeated efforts to trace their whereabouts. Neither the plaintiff nor the survivor could be examined in court. With no credible witnesses, the prosecution failed to prove the charges, and the court ordered the accused’s release for lack of evidence.Special Pocso judge Vikas Nagar noted that no satisfactory evidence was available against Mithlesh Kumar to prove that he committed sexual assault or use of criminal force on the minor with the intent to outrage her modesty.The case dates back to Oct 31, 2017, when the minor’s father filed a complaint at Sector 20 police station. He stated that around 12.30pm, his wife saw Mithlesh committing ‘obscene and indecent acts’ with their daughter, adding that he fled when he was caught.A case under Section 354 of the IPC (attempt to outrage the modesty of a woman) and Section 6/7 of the POCSO Act was registered.After recording the survivor and her mother’s statement, the accused was arrested, and a chargesheet was filed on Dec 20, the same year. A special Pocso court on March 22, 2018, framed charges against the accused under Section 354 of the IPC and Section 7/8 of the Pocso Act. Kumar refused the charges and pleaded innocence, following which the trial began. The prosecution presented two witnesses, the investigation officer and the scribe of the FIR.In the case that has been ongoing for eight years, police never recorded the statement of the 4.5-year-old survivor before the magistrate, nor got her clothes examined in a forensic lab.The prosecution, on the other hand, failed to present the plaintiff, the father of the survivor, and the eyewitness, the mother of the survivor, before the court for recording their statements. They also did not produce any document in support of the minor’s age at the time of the alleged offence.The court noted that the family lived in a rented house at the time of the alleged crime and was later untraceable.PW1, SI Jaiveer Singh, said that the complainant did not show him the minor’s clothes, which she wore at the time of the alleged incident. “I neither collected the girl’s clothes nor did I send these clothes for examination,” he said.SPP JP Bhati said that the prosecution was not in a position to examine any more witnesses and thereby requested to close the prosecution evidence.The court observed that there was no document to support the age of the minor, which was important in her absence from the court. The judge also pointed out that, in the FIR and the statement of the eyewitness given before the police, it was not clear what sort of act was committed by the accused.“The words ‘indecent’ and ‘obscene’ are insufficient to indicate any particular guilt,” the court observed.
