Noida: A special Pocso court on Friday acquitted a Dadri man accused of aggravated sexual assault of a teenager in 2022 and ordered that a criminal miscellaneous complaint case be filed against the girl’s mother for lodging a false FIR.Additional sessions judge Abhishek Pandey ordered the accused’s acquittal after the three prosecution witnesses — the girl, the girl’s mother and the girl’s brother — did not support the prosecution’s story and were declared hostile. “Under the given circumstances, the charged offences under Section 376 (3) of IPC and Section 3/4 of Pocso Act remained unsubstantiated,” the judge said.The matter is linked to an FIR registered by police on the basis of a written complaint filed by the teenager’s mother on Aug 20, 2022. She claimed that her daughter, then aged about 15 years, was going to her friend’s home at around 10.30 pm the previous night when the accused accosted her on the way, molested her, removed her clothes and also tried raping her.The investigating officer got the statement of the teenager recorded before a magistrate and conducted a medico-legal examination, following which the accused was arrested.However, during trial, the girl’s mother said she had not mentioned the name of the accused in the complaint and the final complaint was not read out to her by the scribe. The girl’s brother said he did not have any idea about the incident and police never recorded his statement.The girl said she had fallen into a ditch while going to her friend’s house and had presumed someone had pushed her although she refused to identify the accused. She said she had only given a statement to the magistrate because police “tutored her”.The doctor who conducted the medical test confirmed the injury mark on the teenager’s elbow as the only external injury and stated that she refused to undergo a test for internal injuries.From the witnesses’ accounts, the court concluded that the prosecution narrative was not substantiated and it was not proved beyond doubt that the accused had molested or sexually assaulted the minor.
