A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Monday remitted the 20-year sentence of a man found guilty of the aggravated sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl whom he later married and had children with in Tamil Nadu.
The Special Bench, also comprising the two senior most puisne judges, Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B.R. Gavai, passed the order under the extraordinary powers of the Supreme Court to do ‘complete justice’ endowed to the top court by Article 142 of the Constitution.
The order came in a curative petition, a rare remedy, filed by the convict, Sankar, in the Supreme Court.
He had argued that “with his incarceration, his marital life with the prosecutrix (the assault victim who is his wife now) has been shattered, leaving the prosecutrix and her children destitute”.
The man was convicted and sentenced to two decades of rigorous imprisonment under Section 6 (aggravated sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in 2018. His sentence was confirmed by the Madras High Court in 2021. His appeal and subsequently, a petition to review the judgment, were rejected by the Supreme Court. This had led to the filing of the curative plea.
In it, the man said he and the prosecutrix had been married for many years and have two children.
The counsel for the convict said the man was the uncle of the victim.
The Bench, considering the “peculiar facts and circumstances” of the case, remitted the remaining prison sentence of the man. The court ordered the man to be released, and the fine of ₹2 lakh imposed on him to be waived.
The court referred to two of its earlier judgments, including K. Dandapani, in which the Supreme Court had refused to “disturb” the “marriage” and “happy family life” of a man convicted of raping his minor niece, who later became his wife.
In this case, the custom of avunculate marriage between maternal uncles and nieces in Tamil Nadu had triumphed over the strict provisions of the POCSO Act.
