By Kawanpreet Kaur 

The Chhattisgarh High Court upheld the conviction and sentence of 20 years imposed upon an accused who committed sexual assault on a minor girl. It was alleged by the father of the victim that the accused took the victim, who was 16 years and mentally weak, to his house and raped her. An FIR was filed against the accused for offences under Section 376 of IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act. Based on the evidence, the Trial Court convicted the accused and sentenced him to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs. 5,000. Later, the accused appealed in the High Court. The Court held that the Trial Court rightly convicted the accused for the offence under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and there is no illegality and irregularity in the findings recorded by the Trial Court. It placed reliance on the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of State of U.P. v. Sonu Kushwaha (2023) in which it was held that, “the POCSO Act was enacted to provide more stringent punishments for the offences of child abuse of various kinds and that is why minimum punishments have been prescribed under Sections 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act for various categories of sexual assaults on children. Hence, Section 6, on its plain language, leaves no discretion to the Court and there is no option but to impose the minimum sentence as done by the Trial Court. The Section uses the phrase “shall not be less than” therefore, the courts cannot impose a lesser sentence. The Courts are powerless to do that unless there is a specific statutory provision enabling the Court to impose a lesser sentence. Therefore, there is no question of showing any leniency to the accused.” Accordingly, the Court affirmed the conviction. (Ashish Sendariya @ Bhundu v. State of Chhattisgarh- Criminal Appeal No. 722 of 2023) 

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