New Delhi, Sep 24 A Delhi court has acquitted a man who was accused of assaulting a woman with whom he was in a relationship in 2016, saying the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The complainant turned hostile during the trial and said she married the accused in 2017, and “now they are leading a healthy matrimonial life with their daughter”.
Additional Sessions Judge Dhirendra Rana was hearing a case against accused Deepak Sehrawat, against whom the Vasant Kunj South police station had registered a case under several Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections, including 452 (house trespass after preparation for hurt) and 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide).
According to the prosecution, Sehrawat had gone to the beauty parlour run by the complainant, Pooja Verma, in Mahipalpur on October 8, 2016, and allegedly assaulted her over a dispute.
It said that the accused punched her, kicked her, damaged articles in the parlour, hit her on the head with a glass and later fled with her mobile phone.
The woman had suffered a head injury and was taken to a hospital. An FIR was registered on her complaint and Sehrawat was later arrested. A mobile phone was recovered from his possession during the arrest.
In an order dated September 10, the court said that the complainant has not uttered even a single word against the accused. Instead, she said that she had an altercation with Sehrawat when she accidentally struck against a revolving chair, fell and sustained injuries after her head struck against the glasses fitted in the parlour, it also said.
“She denied the contents of her complaint wherein she had levelled allegations against the accused of assault. Therefore, the testimony of this witness is of no consequence in this case in favour of the prosecution,” the court said.
It noted that the prosecution also relied on the testimony of the complainant’s sister, Poonam, and the sister’s husband, Ashok Kumar, who claimed to have witnessed Sehrawat beating the complainant and hitting her with a glass slab, but their testimonies had several inconsistencies.
The judge noted that Pooja had not testified that she called her sister to inform her of the assault, undermining the claim that the two eyewitnesses rushed to the spot.
It said there was a mismatch between the timing of the police call record and the hospital admission record, which suggested the two witnesses could have arrived at the parlour only after the complainant had already been taken to hospital.
The court further observed that if the witnesses had genuinely seen the accused assaulting the complainant, it would have been “natural human conduct” for them to intervene or at least accompany the injured woman to hospital, which they did not do; instead, she was taken to hospital by a police constable.
“There is serious doubt qua the fact that prosecution witness 2 (Poonam) and prosecution witness 6 (Kumar) had actually seen the accused assaulting the victim,” the court said.
The judge said it would be highly unsafe to convict the accused on the basis of such testimonies, which do not find corroboration from the victim.
“I am of the considered view that prosecution has failed to prove its case against the accused… Accordingly, the accused is acquitted of committing offences punishable under Sections 308, 452 and 411 of the IPC,” the judge said.
(PTI News)
