“Don’t repeat such acts in future. Be a good man. Now at this age, you have to do poojas and chant the name of god and spend the rest of your life in peace,” a bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and R M Lodha observed as the entire court burst into laughter.

The bench upheld his conviction, but modified the seven-year sentence imposed to six years, already undergone by him. The accused, Kaikondan, had raped the 60-year-old victim with such savagery that her right hand was fractured. According to the prosecution, the accused on February 2, 1999, dragged the victim to his hut in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district and raped her.

The accused denied the charge, but on the basis of the medical evidence and the testimony of the victim, besides circumstantial evidence, the sessions court had on February 24, 2004, convicted Kaikondan for rape and imposed a sentence of seven years’ rigorous imprisonment on him. Aggrieved, the septuagenarian appealed to the Madras High Court which on March 23, 2008, dismissed his plea and confirmed the sentence, following which he moved the apex court.

In the SC, the accused through his counsel M Vijay Bhaskar submitted that there was a one-day delay in the registration of the FIR and the prosecution also failed to produce the X-ray report of the alleged fractured hand of the victim.