Delhi HC upholds 20-year POCSO term: paralysis did not make the offence impossible, court holds

Justice Madhu Jain dismissed an appeal against a conviction for aggravated penetrative sexual assault of a three-year-old child, holding that paralysis did not make the act impossible, that a motive of tutoring was unproved, and that a seven-month delay in the FIR was explained.

A man convicted of sexually assaulting his three-year-old daughter told the Delhi High Court that he was paralysed, bedridden and the victim of a plot by his wife. On 2 November 2026 the court rejected each part of that case and upheld his 20-year sentence.

Justice Madhu Jain dismissed the appeal, which was filed under Section 415(2) read with Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. It challenged a judgment of 6 December 2024 and an order on sentence of 7 February 2025 from the ASJ-06 (POCSO), West District, Tis Hazari Courts.

The appellant appears in the cause title as J P. This report does not name the child, her mother or the family’s address.

What the prosecution alleged

The incident was alleged to have happened in November 2021. The child was born in October 2018, so she was about three years old. The appellant is her father.

Her mother, PW-3, had gone out for household work and left the child with him. On her return, she said, the child was crying and told her that her father had put his finger into her private part.

The mother said she confronted the appellant, who replied that he had been joking. She noticed bleeding and applied ointment. She also said he threatened to harm her and the child if she told anyone, and then left for his native village in Uttar Pradesh.

Nothing was reported then. On 20 June 2022, about seven months later, a PCR call reached the local police station and the child was taken to hospital for examination. The FIR was registered the same day.

The statements of the child and her mother were recorded before a magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC on 21 June 2022. The appellant was arrested from his village on 23 June 2022.

The trial court framed a charge under Section 6 of the POCSO Act on 14 February 2023. Ten witnesses were examined for the prosecution. The appellant denied the allegations in his Section 313 statement.

The defence and the trial court’s view

He said the child had been tutored by her mother, who had developed a relationship with a man from the neighbourhood and wanted to be rid of a husband she had to nurse. He also said he was disabled and could not manage daily tasks without help.

The trial court held that the prosecution had met its initial burden. That attracted the presumptions under Sections 29 and 30 of the POCSO Act, which the appellant, it found, had not rebutted with any plausible defence.

He was convicted under Section 6 and sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 10,000. In default of the fine he would serve one more year of simple imprisonment.

Five points pressed in appeal

Mr Shivek Trehan, appearing for the appellant through the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee, led the challenge. Counsel for the child, Mr Amarlal, defended the conviction.

The first point was the delay. The defence said the mother’s explanation, fear of threats, was unreliable because she had not mentioned threats in her Section 164 statement. It added that she had put the appellant on a bus home two days after the incident, which sat badly with fear.

The second was his physical state. The defence said he had suffered a paralytic attack about a year and a half before the incident, and the Investigating Officer, PW-10, accepted that he could not stand on his own when the police got custody.

The third was medical. The mother did not take the child to a doctor despite seeing bleeding, the hospital examination came six to seven months later, and the record said the hymen was intact with no injuries. Dr Richa Madan, PW-5, also said it was highly improbable that pain would last six months after insertion of a finger.

The fourth was motive: the child had said in cross-examination that her mother slept with the neighbour, and the Investigating Officer had not looked into it. The fifth was inconsistency. The child gave no number of incidents in her Section 164 statement but said in court that it happened twice.

Age and the tutoring question

The court began with age and found it undisputed. The birth certificate recorded a date of birth in October 2018, and a constable, PW-6, had verified it with the Registrar of Births and Deaths. The child was therefore well under twelve.

On the central contention, the judge framed the issue this way:

“whether the testimony of PW-1 suffers from any infirmity on account of the alleged tutoring and whether the circumstances relied upon by the defence are sufficient to cast reasonable doubt upon her account.” (para 28)

She relied on Dattu Ramrao Sakhare v. State of Maharashtra, where the Supreme Court held that a child witness can be relied upon even without an oath if she understands the questions and gives rational answers. Courts must still check for tutoring.

Rai Sandeep v. State (NCT of Delhi) was cited for testing a witness by the consistency of her account.

Before recording the child’s evidence, the trial judge had asked preliminary questions. She correctly answered about her age, her schooling and why she was in court, and said no one was pressuring her. Only then was her testimony taken.

She identified her father through the one-way computer screen and said she had told the truth to the magistrate. The court recorded that she described the act, pointed to the part of her body involved, and that her mother had been away at work.

The cross-examination that cut both ways

The defence relied on the child’s answers about a man she called Chacha. He visited the house, slept downstairs, and her mother slept with him, she said. Counsel said this showed the mother had a motive.

The judge drew the opposite inference. If the mother had coached the child to ruin her husband, it was hard to see why she would also coach her to say something that cast aspersions on herself.

She added that this did not by itself exclude tutoring, but it lent weight to the child’s reliability. The child had also denied, specifically, that her mother or the neighbour had tutored her.

The motive was otherwise unsupported. The mother denied that the neighbour paid household expenses or rent, and apart from the child’s answer nothing was on record. Even if the two were associated, the court said, that did not show the allegation was fabricated.

The difference between the Section 164 statement and the deposition on the number of incidents was minor. The judge cited Vijay @ Chinee v. State of Madhya Pradesh for the rule that small discrepancies not touching the core cannot sink a case.

Medical evidence and the plea of paralysis

The court noted that the hospital history recorded the allegation against the father on the first examination, on 20 June 2022. It read Dr Madan’s answer in full: she had also said psychological trauma can continue over such a period.

The mother had approached the hospital when the child complained of pain while passing urine, around six months on. That was not a claim that the same physical pain had run unbroken. A doctor’s inability to link later pain to the earlier act did not show there was no act.

The absence of injuries after months proved nothing either. Citing State of Punjab v. Gurmit Singh, the judge held that a conviction can rest on the victim’s trustworthy word without independent medical corroboration.

On paralysis, the court accepted the fact. The mother, a police team member and the Investigating Officer all spoke to it. The question was whether it made the particular act impossible.

PW-4, the doctor who examined the appellant on 24 June 2022, opined that there was “nothing to suggest that the accused cannot do sexual act or sexual intercourse” (para 43). The mother had also said he changed the child’s undergarments and smoked a bidi using one hand.

Inability to stand or move independently, the judge held, cannot without further medical evidence be equated with complete inability to use his upper limbs.

Why the seven-month delay was excused

On delay, the court again turned to Gurmit Singh, which recognises that families may hesitate to approach the police for fear of reputation and consequences. It also cited Tulshidas Kanolkar v. State of Goa, under which delay is not a mechanical ground for rejection.

The inquiry is whether a satisfactory explanation exists and whether the delay led to embellishment. The court found that the delay “stands satisfactorily explained” given the child’s age and that the accused was her own father.

The mother had pointed to fear of threats and the worry that her daughter would reveal what happened. The judge noted the missing threat in the earlier statement but held that the explanation did not rest on threats alone. The relationship, the child’s age and the way the matter surfaced were equally material.

The sequence after disclosure was clear from the record. The GD entry was made on 20 June 2022, examination followed, the FIR was registered, and the Section 164 statements were recorded the next day. No embellishment from the delay had been shown.

Section 3(b), Section 5(m) and the presumption

The court then checked the ingredients. Section 3(b) of the POCSO Act covers inserting a part of the body, other than the penis, into a child’s vagina, urethra or anus. Section 5(m) makes penetrative assault on a child below twelve aggravated, punishable under Section 6.

It held that digital penetration was established. The child, of very tender age, described the act in the language she had and pointed to the relevant body part in court, consistently, and her mother’s evidence of the immediate disclosure supported her.

The foundational facts for the presumption under Section 29 were therefore proved and not rebutted. The judge added that even without the presumption, the evidence as a whole proved guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Order

The conviction under Section 6 of the POCSO Act was upheld, and so was the order on sentence of 20 years of rigorous imprisonment, a fine of Rs 10,000 and one year of simple imprisonment in default. The court found no perversity or misappreciation of evidence.

The appeal was dismissed and pending applications were disposed of. Copies of the judgment were directed to go to the trial court and the Jail Superintendent for compliance. Judgment had been reserved on 12 October 2026.