Pay ₹10 lakh each to three child victims of sexual offence, orders Madras High Court
Impressing upon the need for trial courts to order adequate monetary compensation to child victims of sexual offences who have to undergo therapy for post-traumatic
Impressing upon the need for trial courts to order adequate monetary compensation to child victims of sexual offences who have to undergo therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, the Madras High Court has ordered payment of ₹10 lakh each to three minor boys who were subjected to aggravated penetrative sexual assault by none other than their fathers for a long period of time. Justice A.D. Jagadish Chandira allowed a criminal appeal filed by the mother of two of the victim children and held that all three victims would be entitled to the maximum compensation of ₹10 lakh each. The appeal had been preferred against the failure of a special court for Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act cases to award sufficient compensation in the incestuous abuse case. The petitioner’s counsel Deepika Murali brought it to the notice of the court that the appellant had married Hidayathullah Khan in 2006, and they gave birth to two children. The appellant’s younger sister had married Hidayathullah Khan’s younger brother Hafeezulla Khan in 2011, and this couple had one son. All of them resided together at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
In 2018, the appellant caught her brother-in-law red-handed when he was showing pornographic visuals on his mobile phone to the three children. Though she took up the issue with her husband, he refused to confront his younger brother. Subsequently, the appellant learnt that her husband was also having an illicit affair with multiple women and therefore, decided to part ways with him. During the same period, the appellant noticed burn injuries on the body of her younger son, but the child refused to reveal the cause. However, her sister’s son disclosed that those injuries were caused by the Khan brothers, who used to give stupefying agents to the kids and force them to cooperate for sex. Shocked to hear it, the appellant and her sister returned to India with their three children. In 2019, the Khan brothers also flew down to India and convinced their wives' parents to send their spouses and their children to their local residence with them. The trauma continued even here, with the brothers continuing to subject the three children to aggravated penetrative sexual assault and hence, the appellant chose to lodge a police complaint on April 16, 2019.
The police took two years to complete the investigation. They filed a charge sheet only on September 3, 2021. Finally, the trial court on January 29, 2025, convicted the Khan brothers under the POCSO Act and sentenced them to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment. The first two convicts’ youngest brother, Kalimulla Khan, and their mother Mumtaz Begum were also sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The trial court found the children’s testimony corroborated the medical evidence. Since they had deposed that the third and fourth convicts did not indulge in penetrative sexual assault but only used to dance around them naked and force the kids to dance naked, the trial judge chose to convict them for the charge of sexual harassment alone under Section 12 of the POCSO Act and awarded three years of sentence. After taking note that the children had been paid an interim compensation of ₹25,000 each in 2021, the trial judge imposed a fine of ₹1.5 lakh each on the two prime convicts, besides ₹30,000 each on the other two convicts and ordered that the victims would be entitled to that money too as compensation if the convicts choose to pay the fine amount without undergoing the default sentence.
The BriefWire