Age sixty-one and a position of trust are not mitigation — a school correspondent's conviction is confirmed
Justice G. Arul Murugan dismisses the appeal of a man convicted of sexually assaulting a ten-year-old child at the school he ran, and holds that locking the room established wrongful confinement under Section 342 of the Penal Code.
The appeal was against a conviction recorded in October 2022 by the Sessions Judge of the Fast Track Mahalir Neethimandram at Krishnagiri, in a case investigated by the All Women Police Station at Hosur. The appellant was the correspondent of the school — its administrative head — and sixty-one years old. The child was ten. On 9 October 2026 the Madras High Court found no illegality or perversity in the trial court's findings, confirmed the conviction and sentence, and directed that the appellant be secured to serve whatever remains of it.
The mitigation that was urged, and refused
What the appellant put forward in support of a reduced sentence was his age and his standing. The Court's answer inverts both.
“The appellant/accused, despite being the School Correspondent and aged 61, did not hesitate to commit the crime of sexual assault on a ten year old child.” The office is not a reason for leniency; it is part of what makes the offence what it is. A child in a school is in the care of the person who runs it, and the sentence is not to be softened because the offender was the person she had least reason to fear.
The locked door
The conviction included an offence under Section 342 of the Penal Code — wrongful confinement — and on that the judgment turns on a single detail of the child's evidence.
She gave clear evidence that the appellant locked the room at the time of the assault; that on trying to escape she found the door locked; and that even when she tried to open the lock he held her again, until she pushed him and got away. No material was brought by the appellant to rebut any of it.
From that the Court drew the conclusion that by locking the door he had confined her for the purpose of committing the assault, and that Section 342 therefore stood established. It is a small point of law with a plain application: the lock is not incidental to the offence, it is a second offence.
Why the child's account held up
A conviction resting on the evidence of a ten-year-old needs corroboration of the surrounding circumstances, and the judgment sets out how each strand was supplied.
The incident was on 24 November 2019 at the school. The child had gone there to attend a handwriting class; the teacher of that class deposed that she attended as usual that day. A relative of hers was at the same school attending an astrology class, and the teacher of that class established who was present — he had travelled to Chennai, and had telephoned the students attending to tell them to read what had been taught in the earlier session. Four other witnesses who were with that relative confirmed the presence of both the relative and the child at the school.
At about 10.30 in the morning the child came crying and narrated what had happened. Four separate witnesses corroborated that moment. One of them contacted the Child Helpline on 1098 to report it. The assault itself, on the prosecution case, occurred while the child was searching for a book and the appellant offered to help her find it.
What that chain does is remove the alternatives. The child's presence, the appellant's presence, the time, the immediate complaint and the independent report to the helpline were each established by someone other than her — so the only question left was whether to believe her about what happened in the room, and on that the trial court's finding was not disturbed.
Order
On a reappraisal of the entire evidence on record, the Court found nothing warranting interference in the trial court's findings. The conviction and sentence imposed by the trial court stand confirmed and the criminal appeal was dismissed. The trial court was directed to take steps to secure the appellant to serve the remaining period of the sentence, if any.
Copies of the judgment were directed to the Sessions Judge at Krishnagiri, to the Inspector of Police at the All Women Police Station, Hosur, and to the Public Prosecutor.
Four years passed between the trial court's judgment and the dismissal of the appeal, which in a case of this kind is on the quicker side — and the direction to secure the appellant suggests the sentence has not been running throughout.
The case was tried in a Mahalir Neethimandram — one of Tamil Nadu's designated courts for offences against women and children — and investigated by an All Women Police Station. Those are structures built to make an account like this one easier to give. What the judgment shows is the rest of the work: a complaint made the same morning, a helpline call logged by somebody other than the family, and five witnesses who could place everyone in the building.