The fact of the case 

In the Matter at hand Duryodhan Majhi v. State of Odisha a prison criminal appeal against the judgement and order of the additional sessions judge, who also served as the special judge under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act of 2012, whereby the convict was found guilty under Sections 376(3) of the Penal Code, 1860, and 6 of the POCSO Act. On December 28, 2018, the father of a young victim girl filed a first information report, indicating that her daughter was 14 and enrolled in Class IX. On December 27, 2018, around 10:30 a.m. a co-villager went up to the girl’s maternal grandpa and requested that they take her to their village. The prisoner then sexually assaulted her on a bush path. According to the Special Judge of POSCO, the prosecution has established beyond a reasonable doubt that the young victim was under sixteen years old at the time of the offence. 

Conclusion by the Court 

The Orissa High Court’s Single Judge Bench partially upheld the convict’s appeal and cleared him of the charges brought against him under Sections 376(3) and 6 of the POCSO Act, but found him guilty under Section 376(1) of the IPC and sentenced him to ten years of solitary confinement.

The victim was a juvenile, 15 years old, and a Class-IX student at the time of recording. The court looked through the victim’s deposition. Her birth date was not mentioned in the evidence, and the informant was unable to provide an accurate age at the time of the incident or a precise date of birth. The headmaster in charge of the victim’s school looked through the school entrance register, where her date of birth was listed as 16 November 2003. The headmaster in charge, however, said that the young victim was only permitted to enrol in the school in Class IX after presenting her prior school transcript. To confirm the date of birth listed in the register, the investigating officer did not go to the prior school where the little victim was enrolled. The Court concluded that altering the initial date of birth, as stated in the prior school register, cannot be ruled out in the SLC and therefore the SLC has no significance as independent evidence.

The absence of oral testimony and the IO’s failure to seize pertinent documentation evidence, according to the court’s ruling, made it impossible for the prosecution to establish the young victim’s age of sixteen. The testimony of the young victim and two guys who discovered the defendant and victim in a naked state were both used by the court as evidence. The Court also looked through the Medical Officer’s report, which revealed that during the young victim’s physical examination, the medical professional discovered scratch marks on the right breast, dried semen, enlarged labia majora, and ruptured hymen.

The court determined that the prosecution had established that the defendant raped a child victim on December 27, 2018, in the Jhanjimunda woodland. However, the prosecution was unable to establish that the minor victim was under sixteen at the time of the occurrence, which was necessary to meet Section 376(3) of the IPC’s criteria. As a consequence, Section 6 of the POCSO Act accusation was not established. The defendant was cleared of both charges by the court, but he was convicted guilty under Section 376(1) of the IPC and given a ten-year jail term. The Court further ordered the court to pay the young victim’s compensation within two months of receiving the judgement.

CASE NAME – Duryodhan Majhi v. State of Odisha, Jail Criminal Appeal No. 09 of 2021