Representative image of a person in jail.
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A 22-year-old man was found guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl in Dhoraji town, in Gujarat's Rajkot district, even though his DNA did not match that of her foetus. The man was convicted based on other evidence and the statement of the survivor, media reports said.
The man has been sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment.
Thereafter the court also ordered the Rajkot SP to investigate and launch an enquiry against the investigating officer (IO) to understand the reason behind his failure to probe two other suspects in the case who were named in the complaint by the survivors' aunt.
A TOI report said further quoting Rajkot SP Himkar Singh, "According to the court's order, I have entrusted ASP Simran Bharadwaj with the departmental inquiry against the IO of the case."
The survivor's aunt had registered a complaint in 2024, at Bhayavadar police station. She alleged that "under the pretence of romance", the girl was raped for over two years by the accused, that resulted to pregnancy.
The survivor also testified that she was raped multiple times in these two years, the report further added.
She later gave birth to a child at the Junagadh govt hospital.
The publication also quoted Kartikey Parekh, the additional public prosecutor, as saying, "...Even after receiving the DNA report, the IO did not record the statements of the girl or her relatives regarding the involvement of other suspects, and the testimony of the survivor can't be rejected only because the DNA report doesn't match."
The court, after hearing both sides, said, "The prosecution succeeded in proving that the accused committed the crime under BNS Sections 376 (3), 376 (2) (n) and under POCSO."