A 6 year old child cannot be expected to tell the full name of the rapist -----Bombay High Court

The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court, while upholding the conviction of a man convicted of raping a minor, observed that A 6 year old child cannot be expected to remember people's full names.                                                                         The case of the prosecution was that the victim's mother saw her 6-year-old daughter lying in a pool of blood and someone told her that a person had taken her to the river bank and assaulted her.The girl was in a state of shock, so she was not in a position to tell or speak anything. After 3 days, when the girl was able to speak, she told the police that Satya had assaulted her.The girl's parents told the police that Satya is Satish Ramesh. Police arrested the accused.                                                  The accused was prosecuted under the provisions of the SC/ST Act and other sections of the IPC for rape of a minor in the court located in Dhule, Maharashtra.                                                                   The Sessions Court convicted the accused in 2015 and sentenced him to 15 years rigorous imprisonment.                                      The convict challenged the conviction of the Sessions Court on the ground that the minor had given the police an alias Satya and the parents accused him of raping their daughter.In the appeal, the convict made another argument in his defense that the police had taught the girl to take her surname.                                                   A Division bench of Justice Vibha Kankanwadi and Justice Y.G. Khobragade after applying the arguments of the convict to the test of law, concluded that A 6 year old girl cannot be expected to tell the full name of another person living nearby.She must know the person by first or last name or can identify the person by the names of that person's children.After telling the name of the accused Satya  by the victim girl, her mother telling the full name of the accused by the above surname cannot be held wrong because it affected the personal interest of the accused.Apart from this, the accused has not told any motive for falsely implicating him.The bench said that the statement of the accused that the police had taught the girl to adopt her surname also does not appear to have any substance.Why would the police implicate the accused The reason for the police implicating the accused in such a crime should be clear if there is no reason it cannot be said that the police has taught the girl to name the accused.                                                                           Court after re-evaluation of the evidence on record concluded that the conviction of the accused by the Sessions Court was justified and there is no need to interfere in the matter.