Upholding a life sentence for the rape of a child, the Patna High Court held that peripheral contradictions in a child victim’s testimony, explained by trauma and the natural limitations of a child witness, do not destroy the substratum of the prosecution case, while sharply criticising the perfunctory police investigation and ordering departmental action against the officer.
Patna: The Patna High Court has dismissed an appeal and affirmed the conviction and life sentence of a man found guilty of the penetrative sexual assault of a child under the age of 12, holding that the core testimony of the child victim was consistent and reliable, corroborated by the medical evidence, and that minor contradictions attributable to the trauma of a child victim did not create reasonable doubt [appellant v. State of Bihar; parties not named to protect the child victim’s identity].
A Division Bench of Justice Bibek Chaudhuri and Justice Rana Vikram Singh upheld the conviction under Section 376(2)(i) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and the sentence of rigorous imprisonment for the remainder of the convict’s natural life. Because the case concerns a minor victim of a sexual offence, LawChakra is not naming the victim, her family, the convict or any detail that could identify the child; her identity is protected in law.
The case
According to the prosecution, the offence took place at night in 2017 while the child, who was alone in the house with her young brother as her mother was away, was asleep. She named a neighbour as the assailant. A trial court, the 1st Additional Sessions Judge-cum-Special Judge (POCSO) at Darbhanga, convicted the accused in 2018 and sentenced him to life imprisonment with a fine, and directed payment of Rs 6 lakh compensation to the victim under the Bihar Victim Compensation Scheme. The convict appealed. (LawChakra does not set out the details of the assault, and reports only what is necessary to explain the legal issues.)
At trial, the prosecution examined six witnesses, including the victim, her mother, her aunt, the investigating officer and the examining doctor, and marked twelve documents, among them the victim’s statement recorded under Section 164 CrPC and the medical examination report. The accused pleaded not guilty, denied the incriminating circumstances in his Section 313 CrPC statement, and led no defence evidence.
Contradictions do not destroy the ‘substratum’ of the case
The central legal question was whether contradictions and improvements in the child victim’s account, and shortcomings in the investigation, created reasonable doubt. The Court held that they did not. It found that the core version of the victim was consistent across her three statements, her initial complaint (fardbeyan), her statement under Section 164 CrPC, and her deposition at trial, in which she clearly named and identified the accused, and that this was corroborated by medical evidence establishing recent penetrative injury.
The peripheral contradictions, on matters such as whether the victim became unconscious after the occurrence, the precise timing of her aunt’s arrival, and who exactly took her to hospital, were, the Court held, “explainable by the trauma suffered by a child victim and the natural limitations of a child witness.” Such discrepancies, it emphasised, “do not destroy the substratum of the prosecution case.” The Court reaffirmed the settled principle that the testimony of a child victim of sexual assault, if it inspires confidence and is consistent on the essential features of the occurrence, can sustain a conviction, and that minor inconsistencies of the kind naturally expected from a traumatised child do not warrant the rejection of otherwise credible evidence.
On the victim’s age, decisive for attracting the enhanced punishment, the Court noted that radiological examination had placed her bony age between 10 and 12 years, and that, in the absence of contrary evidence, she was a child below 12 on the date of the occurrence, so that Section 376(2)(i) IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act were attracted. It also rejected the defence of false implication and previous enmity, finding it unsubstantiated and left at the level of mere suggestion.
Investigation ‘leaves much to be desired’
While affirming the conviction, the Court was sharply critical of the quality of the police investigation. It observed that the investigation conducted by the then Station House Officer of the Mahila Police Station “leaves much to be desired,” noting that several elementary and necessary steps had been omitted, among them the examination of independent witnesses, the medical examination of the accused, the collection and dispatch of vital forensic material, and the preparation of a site plan.
Although these lapses had not ultimately prejudiced the prosecution case, the Court held, they reflected “a perfunctory approach in the investigation of a serious offence involving the sexual assault of a minor child.” It accordingly directed the Senior Superintendent of Police to examine the matter and take appropriate departmental action against the officer concerned, in accordance with law and after affording her a reasonable opportunity of hearing, and to submit a compliance report within three months.
The order, and why it matters
Dismissing the appeal, the Court affirmed the conviction and the life sentence, directed that the convict serve the sentence for the remainder of his natural life, and maintained the Rs 6 lakh compensation to the victim, directing the District Legal Services Authority to ensure it was paid within thirty days if not already disbursed.
The judgment is a useful reaffirmation of two important principles. The first concerns the evidentiary weight of a child victim’s testimony in sexual-offence cases: courts approach such evidence with care but do not demand the impossible standard of a flawless, adult-like narrative, and where the core account is consistent and medically corroborated, peripheral discrepancies born of trauma and a child’s limited sense of time and sequence will not defeat a conviction. That approach protects child victims from having genuine cases collapse over the very inconsistencies that trauma predictably produces.
The second is the Court’s willingness to hold the investigating machinery to account even while upholding a conviction. By recording that the investigation was perfunctory and directing departmental action against the officer, the Court signalled that a conviction secured despite shoddy investigation is not a vindication of the investigating agency, and that lapses in serious cases, particularly those involving the sexual assault of children, must be examined and corrected, lest a weaker case fail for the same reasons. The affirmation of the compensation award, and the direction to ensure its prompt payment, round out a judgment attentive both to the accountability of the offender and to the welfare of the child victim.
Case Title: Appellant v. State of Bihar [Criminal Appeal (DB) No. 1390 of 2018]
Bench: Justice Bibek Chaudhuri and Justice Rana Vikram Singh, Patna High Court
Date of Judgment: September 17, 2026
(The parties are not named to protect the identity of the minor victim under the POCSO Act.)