Madurai Bench Sets Aside POCSO Death Sentence, Acquits Accused on Reasonable Doubt After Independent Re-Appreciation of Evidence

The Madurai Bench declined to confirm a death sentence awarded under the POCSO Act, finding tutored testimony, unexplained delay, absent medical corroboration, and a fundamentally flawed trial process.

A Division Bench of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, comprising Justice N. Anand Venkatesh and Justice K.K. Ramakrishnan, has set aside the conviction and death sentence imposed on an accused person by the Principal Sessions Court (POCSO Act Cases), Sivagangai, in Spl.S.C.No.23 of 2024. The accused had been sentenced to death for aggravated penetrative sexual assault on five child victims under Section 5(m) read with Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. After conducting what the bench described as an independent and exhaustive re-appreciation of the entire oral and documentary evidence across more than twenty sittings, the court held that the prosecution had failed to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt. The accused was ordered to be released forthwith from custody, unless required in connection with any other case.

The Charges and the Trial Court's Findings

The accused, who was approximately 45 years of age at the time of the alleged occurrence on 4 February 2024, was charged in two sets of counts. The first charge alleged that he lured five child victims to his house under the pretext of allowing them to play video games on his mobile phone and subjected them to penetrative sexual assault on multiple occasions, an offence under Section 5(l) read with Section 6 of the POCSO Act. The second charge alleged aggravated penetrative sexual assault on children below twelve years of age under Section 5(m) read with Section 6 of the Act. A further charge of criminal intimidation under Section 506(ii) of the Indian Penal Code was also framed.

The trial court, upon appreciation of the evidence of 23 prosecution witnesses, 36 exhibits and six material objects, convicted the accused on all charges. For the offences under Section 5(m) read with Section 6 (five counts), the trial court imposed the sentence of death. The matter reached the Madurai Bench both as a statutory death reference under Section 407 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — which corresponds to Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 — and as a criminal appeal filed by the accused under Section 415 of the BNSS.

The Scope of Confirmation Proceedings

Justice K.K. Ramakrishnan, who authored the judgment on behalf of the bench, set out the legal framework governing the High Court's role in a death reference at the outset. The court emphasised that a reference under Section 407 of the BNSS is not a mere procedural formality. The High Court carries a statutory and constitutional obligation to scrutinise the entire evidence, on facts and in law, uninfluenced by the trial court's conclusions, and to satisfy itself independently both that the conviction is sustainable and that the case falls within the category of the rarest of rare warranting capital punishment.

The bench drew on the decisions of the Supreme Court in Masalti v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1965 SC 202, and State of Tamil Nadu v. Rajendran, (1999) 8 SCC 679, to underline that the High Court must go into the whole of the evidence, consider all the pros and cons, and arrive at conclusions that are its own and independent. It further noted that the greater the severity of the punishment, the greater the obligation upon the prosecution to establish the foundational facts beyond reasonable doubt, citing the Supreme Court's Constitution Bench decision in Mukesh Singh v. State, (2020) 10 SCC 120.

Age of Victims Established; Foundational Facts Not Proved

The bench accepted that the prosecution had successfully proved the ages of the five child victims through birth certificates and school transfer certificates, corroborated by the evidence of the Headmaster examined as P.W.19. All five were found to be under twelve years of age on the date of the alleged occurrence. However, the court held that establishing the age of the victims was only the first of several foundational facts the prosecution was required to prove. The remaining foundational facts — that all five victims had assembled at the accused's house on 4 February 2024 and on prior dates, that each was subjected to penetrative sexual assault, that the school awareness programme prompted disclosure, and that the medical evidence corroborated the assault — were all found to be unproved.

Contradictions in How the Victims Assembled at the Accused's House

The prosecution case was premised on all five victims having assembled at the accused's house, with P.W.4 serving as the connecting link. The bench, on a careful scrutiny of each victim's testimony, found material and irreconcilable inconsistencies regarding the manner and circumstances in which they came to be present at the accused's house together. The court observed that there was no synchronisation in the evidence of the victims about their visit to the accused's house, and that these were not minor discrepancies attributable to normal lapses of memory but contradictions striking at the very genesis of the prosecution case.

The court held that the prosecution version regarding the assembly of all five victims at the accused's house on 4 February 2024 or on prior dates was artificial, improbable and inherently doubtful.

Tutoring and the Parrot-Like Version

A significant portion of the judgment examined whether the testimony of the child victims was the product of tutoring or genuine independent recollection. The bench applied the principles governing child witness evidence laid down by the Supreme Court in Panchhi v. State of U.P., (1998) 7 SCC 177; Digamber Vaishnav v. State of Chhattisgarh, (2019) 4 SCC 522; State of M.P. v. Ramesh, (2011) 4 SCC 786; and K. Venkateshwarlu v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2012) 8 SCC 73.

The court found that all five victims, their respective mothers, and the father of one victim narrated the occurrence in substantially identical terms. Critical details — the manner of the penetrative sexual assault, the screaming and crying, the reason for non-disclosure, the awareness programme on good touch and bad touch, and the criminal intimidation — were recited without variation across all witnesses and introduced for the first time in chief examination before the trial court, absent entirely from the earlier statements recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on 19 February 2024. The bench described this as a parrot-like version and held that such verbatim uniformity was indicative of tutoring or coaching, not independent recollection of the same event.

P.W.5's case was particularly stark. In her Section 164 statement, she had not alleged penetrative sexual assault at all, having stated only that the accused had shown her obscene photographs after which she returned home. Before the trial court she introduced, for the first time, detailed allegations of repeated penetrative sexual assault. The bench held that such a substantial departure from an earlier judicial statement, mirroring the improvements made by other victims in similar terms, rendered her testimony unsafe to rely upon.

The Awareness Programme: An Unproved Foundation

The prosecution case rested on the proposition that none of the victims disclosed the assault until a “Good Touch–Bad Touch” awareness programme was conducted at their school approximately five days after the alleged occurrence on 4 February 2024. The bench found that no teacher, school official or any other representative of the school had been examined to establish that such a programme was in fact held. The complaint was ultimately lodged only on 12 April 2024.

The court noted that Section 19 of the POCSO Act imposes a mandatory obligation on school authorities who receive information regarding the commission of an offence to report the matter to the police. No complaint was lodged by the school, and no school official was examined. The prosecution's reliance on the awareness programme as the foundation for the initiation of criminal proceedings was therefore left entirely without evidentiary support.

The Nine-Day Delay and the Motive

The alleged occurrence on 4 February 2024 was not reported until 12 April 2024, a delay of over nine days from initial disclosure by P.W.1 to her parents and considerably longer from the date of the alleged incident. The bench held, applying the Supreme Court's three-judge bench decision in Parminder Kaur v. State of Punjab, (2020) 8 SCC 811, that the question of delay must be assessed on the specific facts of each case, not by way of sweeping assumptions.

On the facts here, the court found the delay significant. The alleged forcible penetrative sexual assault was said to have occurred in broad daylight in a small house without a door in a village surrounded by neighbouring houses, with the victims crying and screaming loudly, yet no neighbour intervened or heard anything. This, the bench held, rendered the prosecution case highly improbable, and the nine-day delay provided ample opportunity for deliberation, consultation and embellishment before the case was registered.

The defence had consistently suggested that P.W.2's family harboured prior enmity with the accused, arising partly from a dispute in the locality, and that the complaint was further motivated by the prospect of monetary compensation under the government's victim compensation scheme. The bench found that two of the victims and the mother of one victim had admitted the existence of prior animosity against the accused. P.W.4's own evidence disclosed that her mother had pre-existing disputes with the accused. The court held that, given the admitted strained relationship, it was inherently improbable that parents would have permitted child victims to visit the accused's house, striking at the foundation of the prosecution narrative.

Medical Evidence Did Not Support the Prosecution Case

The victims had been medically examined on 14 February 2024, ten days after the alleged occurrence. The Medical Officer found no external or internal injuries on the bodies of any of the five victims. He admitted that his opinion indicating sexual intercourse was not based on objective medical findings but on the case history narrated by the victims and the absence of the hymen. When cross-examined, he confirmed that the victims had informed him that the occurrence had taken place on 10 February 2024 — a date that differed materially from the prosecution's case of 4 February 2024. This discrepancy in the date of occurrence, recorded in the medical reports, constituted an additional material inconsistency.

The bench held, relying on the Supreme Court's decision in State of Jharkhand v. Shailendra Kumar Rai @ Pandav Rai, 2022 SCC Online SC 1494, that the condition of the hymen is not a decisive indicator either to prove or disprove penetrative sexual assault. Given that the victims were active children who played together and walked to school, the absence of the hymen could not by itself be treated as incriminating. The court found that the medical opinion, being substantially based on the history furnished by the victims rather than objective findings, was “bereft of logic or objectivity.” The absence of any injuries, in a case where all victims alleged forcible penetrative assault accompanied by unbearable pain and sustained crying, defied the prosecution version.

Non-Recovery of the Mobile Phone

The prosecution's case was that the accused lured the victims to his house by offering them access to his mobile phone to play video games and that he also showed them obscene photographs stored on the device. The bench found that the mobile phone was never recovered by the Investigating Officer. No explanation was offered for this failure. The court held that in a case where the mobile phone formed the foundation of the prosecution narrative regarding the victims' assembly at the accused's house and their exposure to obscene material, the failure to recover the device or collect any electronic evidence constituted a significant lacuna further weakening the prosecution case.

Defective Identification of the Accused

The bench found that the identification of the accused during the trial was procedurally defective. During the deposition of each victim, the accused was seated behind a glass partition and was not shown to the witnesses. Despite this, the trial judge recorded that the victims had identified the accused in court. The bench held that this recording was contrary to the proceedings as they appeared from the deposition itself, and that no legally recognised mode of identification had been followed. The court found no material or circumstance from which proper identification could be inferred.

Fundamental Failure of the Trial Process

Beyond the evidentiary deficiencies, the bench found that the accused had not received a fair trial as guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court identified a cumulative series of procedural failures: the accused was denied an effective opportunity to consult and instruct counsel; counsel was absent on material occasions; the record regarding effective cross-examination was inadequate; preliminary questions were not put to the child witnesses to assess their competence before administering the oath, as mandated by the Supreme Court in decisions including Pradeep v. State of Haryana; the identification procedure was irregular; and the trial court convicted the accused under Section 4 of the POCSO Act even though no charge under that provision had been framed — a course held to be legally unsustainable and prejudicial to the accused.

The bench held that

The Suggestibility Theory

In a detailed discussion, the bench invoked the concept of suggestibility in the context of child witness testimony. It observed that children are comparatively more susceptible than adults to suggestion, social influence and memory distortion, and may unconsciously tailor their responses to perceived expectations of parents, teachers, investigators or other authority figures — a phenomenon the court described as “demand characteristics.” Post-event information can become assimilated into a child's recollection, producing genuine but inaccurate memories, a process the court identified as “memory contamination.” Repeated discussions, rehearsal and narration before complaint or deposition may reinforce such suggestibility. Applying this framework to the present case, the bench found that the surrounding circumstances did not lend assurance to the testimony of any of the five victims.

Compensation Not to Be Recovered; No Action Against Victims

The bench acknowledged that in cases where false allegations are established, a court may consider directing recovery of compensation paid to complainants. However, it declined to do so here. It observed that the child victims themselves appeared to have been used by their parents, who were responsible for setting the criminal law in motion, and that the children should not be made casualties of an unsuccessful prosecution. Accordingly, the court directed that the compensation already received by the children need not be recovered, and declined to initiate criminal proceedings against the parents of the victims.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh added a separate concurring note. He described the delay of two and a half months between the reservation of judgment on 22 June 2026 and its pronouncement on 8 September 2026 as a reflection of the agonising responsibility involved in a capital case and stated that the judgment had been subjected to repeated scrutiny. He observed that the case illustrated how stringent statutory provisions can be weaponised to hold an innocent person beneath the suspended sword of a death sentence, and noted that courts must not be guided by media narratives or public clamour in such matters. He also observed that the quality of legal defence available to accused persons under the POCSO Act remains a systemic concern, with defence advocates in sensitive cases sometimes being ostracised and local bars refusing representation.

Outcome

The Referred Trial in R.T.(MD).No.5 of 2026 was answered against the prosecution. The Criminal Appeal in Crl.A.(MD).No.689 of 2026 was allowed. The conviction and death sentence passed in Spl.S.C.No.23 of 2024 by the Principal Sessions Court (POCSO Act Cases), Sivagangai District, by judgment dated 20 April 2026, were set aside in their entirety. The accused was acquitted of all charges and directed to be released forthwith, unless his custody is required in connection with any other case. The Registry was directed to remove the names of the five victims and their parents from the judgment before uploading it to the official website.