Anil @ Anthony Arikswamy Joseph vs the State of Maharastra

Criminal Appeal no- 1419 of 2012

Supreme court of India

BENCH: Hon’ble Mr K.S. Radhakrishnan, Hon’ble Mr Vikramajit Sen

DATE OF JUDGEMENT: 20th Feb 2014

RELEVANT SECTIONS:

  • Section 302 IPC (Punishment for murder)
  • Section 377 IPC (Punishment for sexual activity against nature)
  • Section 201 IPC (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence )

BACK STORY

A young boy of the tender age of 10 was subjected to unnatural sexual offence and was killed just to satisfy the lust of the offender. Her mother, Shobha Vidya who is a maid, kept running for days in search of her son, who had gone to school on 10th Jan 2008 and was missing thereafter. She later launched a complaint regarding the same on 15th Jan 2008. Mary, one of the accused neighbour informed the police about a dead body of a young boy found floating in a well at Juna Karastan. The body was extracted and sent to Mayo hospital for postmortem. After the postmortem, the case was registered under section 302 and section 377 of IPC.

The accused was arrested on 17th Jan 2008 and various belongings of the deceased were also seized from the accused home. These were sent to FSL for further examination. Mary along with accused sister and another neighbour confirmed that they had seen the boy with the accused on the day of the crime. The presence of deceased belongings from accused home along with the witness statements confirmed the presence of deceased in the company of accused on the d-day. The DNA reports further confirmed that the accused had committed unnatural sexual activity with the deceased.

FORENSIC REPORT

The postmortem report from Mayo hospital presented by the medical officer showed dilated anus with inflamed margins, abrasions on body, incision wound on forehead and internal injuries, showing the commencement of rape. The injuries were ante mortem and were sufficient to kill the victim, after which he was thrown in the well. The DNA sample was matched between the blood sample of the suspect and the semen stain on pants and with that of the anal smear of the deceased and the report of FSL Mumbai clearly showed that the DNA samples matched.

JUDGEMENT

The sectional judge followed by the high court considers this case to be rare of rarest and had awarded death sentence to the culprit. He further appealed at the Supreme court, where his sentence was reduced. The culprit was sentenced to incarceration of thirty-year under section 302 of IPC, along with imprisonment of ten years with a fine of Rs. 1000 under section 377 of IPC and with imprisonment of three years and Rs.10000 fine under section 201of IPC, following all the evidence presented in the court of law.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *