Additional District and Sessions Judge Swati Sehgal found the offender guilty under Section 376(3) of the IPC and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 to be paid to the victim.
A special fast-track court in Chandigarh has called the rape of an underage girl by a stepfather a “proper case that reflects the depletion of human values and departure from the norms and codes of conduct of our affluent and respectable society” , sentenced a man to life in prison (for the remainder of his natural life) for raping his underage stepdaughter.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Swati Sehgal found the offender guilty under Section 376(3) of the IPC and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 to be paid to the victim.
According to the prosecution, the FIR was registered based on a complaint from the victim’s mother, who said she already had two sons and a daughter when she married the offender in the case in 2013.
After living with the man for about three or four months, the woman returned to her home in Chandigarh. That’s when the man started pressuring her to have another child with him. The man then went to visit her in Chandigarh and started beating and abusing her in front of her children. Although the man was their stepfather, he also allegedly began abusing the children. He also later proceeded to sexually advance the woman’s underage daughter. When the complainant tried to stop him, he threatened to rape her daughter in front of her.
The man later took the complainant’s underage daughter to Uttar Pradesh without informing her. There, the men began raping the minor and even offered to marry her. On November 6, 2018, the man called the complainant on his cell phone, demanding that she hear her daughter screaming as he sexually abused her. After this, the woman approached the police and raised the FIR against the man.
“It is a case where the accused not only raped her stepdaughter, but also stooped to the level of calling the complainant – the victim’s mother – to hear her daughter’s screams while she was being raped. The accused has committed a heinous, serious and despicable act by treating his step-daughter as something of fun in a murderous attitude which deserves to be punished harmlessly and leniently in the strictest term,” the court said.
