The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday acquitted an 80-year-old who was last year sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for raping a 4-year-old girl in 2021 [Swamideen v State of UP].Justice Santosh Rai ruled that trial court, which convicted accused Swamideen in December 2025, had not given due consideration to his alibi showing that he was undergoing eye treatment on the date of incident. The Court found that he was at a hospital 150 kilometers away from the place where the crime allegedly took place.Thus, the Court granted him the benefit of doubt."The documentary evidence produced by the defence, the out-patient registration record of Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya, Chitrakoot, bearing code DTDREF 2204 dated 05.12.2021 and others medical treatment papers of Sadguru Hospital, read with the corroborating testimony of DW-1 and DW-2, establishes a plausible and unrebutted case that the appellant was away from the place of occurrence, undergoing eye treatment at Chitrakoot, on the date of the alleged incident," the Court said while acquitting the convict..The case dates back to December 10, 2021. According to the FIR lodged by the victim's mother, the accused on December 5, 2021, allegedly lured the minor with the promise of a toffee and took her inside his house, where he committed "obscene acts upon her private parts."A Hamirpur court convicted the accused under Section 6 (penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in December 2025.Challenging the verdict, Swamideen argued that there was a delay in registration of the case and initially the complaint only mentioned offences of outraging modesty and sexual assault. It was also submitted that the complainant's statement was riddled with material contradictions and improvements..Considering the evidence, the High Court said it was unable to accept the trial court's finding that the five-day delay in lodging the FIR stood satisfactorily explained. "Equally significant is the fact that the FIR, as originally registered, made no allegation of penetrative sexual assault, invoking only Section 354 IPC and Section 10 of the POCSO Act," it added.The Court also highlighted various contradictions in the complainant's evidence. "They go to the heart of the informant's reliability as a witness, and, more importantly, raise a real and substantial possibility that the victim, examined at the age of four and again, years later, at the age of six, had the opportunity to be tutored by her mother, with whom she remained in constant company," it said.The Bench also said that the medical evidence did not advance the prosecution case as the internal genital examination disclosed a normal hymen with no injury or swelling."While the absence of injury is not, by itself, destructive of a POCSO prosecution, in the facts of this case, where the medical evidence stands entirely neutral, where there are serious contradictions in the ocular evidence, and where an unrebutted alibi has been set up, the absence of corroboration assumes considerable weight," the Court noted further. .Thus, the Court concluded that prosecution had failed to prove the charge against the accused by cogent and reliable evidence and acquitted him of all charges..Advocate Vijay Bahadur Shivhare represented the convict.Advocate Rajesh Kumar Shukla appeared for the State.[Read Judgment]
