The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday dismissed the appeal of a convict and upheld his life imprisonment in the case of a minor girl’s rape. Mohammad Moosa had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Sujawal additional district & sessions court after finding him guilty of the charges.
The appellant’s counsel said the medical evidence produced at the trial creates doubt regarding the authenticity of the case, and sought the appellant’s acquittal. He said the appellant had been falsely implicated in the case because he had divorced the complainant’s aunt.
The additional prosecutor general supported the impugned judgment and argued that no leniency can be shown to the appellant. An SHC division bench headed by Justice Omar Sial said that the discrepancy pointed out by the appellant’s counsel in the chemical analysis and DNA reports is not of such a nature as to detract from the truth of the allegations made.
The court also took exception to the fact that a digital insertion had been made in the victim by the doctor, saying that the procedure followed to verify virginity is an outdated, rejected and deprecated one. The bench asked the medico-legal doctors to revisit the judgment of the Lahore High Court in the case of Sadaf Aziz and update the procedures they follow to ensure that the dignity of any person, let alone a victim of sexual abuse, is stringently protected.
The court said that all the steps had been taken promptly by the complainant, and no cogent reason had been given for a false accusation, while the medical report supports the allegation, and the witnesses corroborate each other, with the victim’s testimony having a ring of truth to it. The SHC said it does not find any reason to interfere with the trial court’s judgment.
