Man who eloped with minor girl for marriage gets 7-yr jail for sexual assault
A local court has sentenced a man to 7 years of rigorous imprisonment for sexual assault on a minor girl. The court of additional sessions judge Raviinder Kaur Sandhu also imposed a fine of Rs. 40000 on the convict in default of payment of fine. He will have to further undergo rigorous imprisonment for 10 months on May 16, 2015. The police had booked the 31-year-old accused under sections 363 kidnapping and 366a procuration of minor girl of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) per the prosecution. The mother of the prosecutrix had claimed in her statement that her daughter was 16 years old and on May 15, 2015 she left for school in the autorickshaw but didn’t return she also alleged that a man who was known to the family had taken her away on the pretext of marriage on her statement. The police registered a case against the accused and arrested him after recovering the girl during the course of the investigation. Section 376 of IPC rape and section 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, POCSO was slapped on the accused however during the trial, the accused pleaded false implication in the case and claimed that he actually liked the girl and wanted to marry her but her parents were not ready