Supreme court refuses to quash POCSO case against judicial officer, wife accused him of molesting minor daughter from 2014-18 | India News
NEW DELHI: Duty bound to determine guilt and punish offenders, a seasoned judicial officer would be the first from his tribe to be tried under provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for continuously molesting his own minor daughter for over four years from 2014.Adjudicating the suspended Maharashtra judicial officer’s plea for quashing the POCSO case, a partial working day bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan termed the case ‘shocking’ and said given the daughter’s statement recorded by a magistrate under section 164 of criminal procedure code, “this is not a case for quashing by any standard.”Counsel for the accused judicial officer attempted to term the POCSO cases lodged against him by his estranged wife as an attempt by her to prejudice the court against him in the pending case of domestic violence lodged by her.The counsel said that though the estranged wife had lodged the domestic violence case against him in 2014, the year when he allegedly started molesting his daughter, not a whisper has been made in the DV case about the alleged molestation. But Justices Mishra and Manmohan were unconvinced and dismissed his plea for quashing the FIR lodged in 2018. Thus, the judicial officer would not face trial in the case.The minor daughter in her statement recorded by the magistrate narrated the ordeal she had to face for four years from 2014, when he was posted as assistant charity commissioner at Bhandara and she was only 12 years old. The molestation continued at different places – Badnapur, Jalna and Aurangabad – where he was posted as a judicial officer.She narrated that her father used to grab her from behind whenever she was alone there. He allegedly used to touch her private parts and demanded kisses from her on the pretext that he was her father and could do anything with her. Only after the mother decided to live separately with her daughters, one of whom was molested by him, that the girl spoke about her ordeal. This is when she lodged the complaint under POCSO Act in 2018.
