The bench comprising Justice Salil Kumar Rai and Justice Vinai Kumar Dwivedi examined an appeal against a conviction under Section 376(2)(i) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. The trial court had sentenced the appellant to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of penetrative sexual assault on a five‑year‑old girl. The High Court set aside that sentence and modified the conviction to aggravated sexual assault under Section 10 of the POCSO Act.
The prosecution’s case rested largely on the mother’s observation of blood on the child’s undergarments and legs on the night of the incident, and on the victim’s statement recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code approximately two months later. In that later statement the victim said she had bled, felt pain and that her undergarments were stained with blood. She did not, however, mention bleeding in her earlier statements to the police, nor did she elaborate on the term “gandaa kaam” during cross‑examination.
The medical examination conducted on the same night as the alleged offence recorded no external or internal injury, noted an intact hymen and found no sign of bleeding or trauma in the genital region. The High Court observed that the absence of injury, by itself, does not disprove an allegation of rape or penetrative sexual assault. However, when the prosecution itself predicates its case on a specific claim of bodily injury or bleeding, and the contemporaneous medical report completely negates that claim without any satisfactory explanation, the inconsistency assumes considerable significance in assessing whether the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
The bench further noted that the victim’s initial statements to the police made no reference to bleeding, to stained undergarments or to blood on her legs. This omission, coupled with the silence during trial when asked to explain the alleged act, cast serious doubt on the veracity of the bleeding allegation introduced later in the Section 164 statement. The Court held that a statement under Section 164 CrPC cannot be used to corroborate a fact that was not deposed to before the court, and therefore the trial court erred in treating the bleeding allegation as substantive evidence.
Considering the medical findings, the High Court concluded that the lack of any injury supported the inference that neither penetration nor the alleged bleeding occurred in the manner claimed by the prosecution. The bench emphasized that, given the tender age of the victim, a penetrative assault accompanied by substantial bleeding would ordinarily leave some detectable sign of injury or trauma unless a medical explanation was offered. The unexplained discrepancy between the mother’s claim of blood and the medical report’s clean finding therefore weakened the prosecution’s case on the charge of penetrative sexual assault.
Accordingly, the Allahabad High Court set aside the life term imposed under Section 376(2)(i) IPC and Section 6 POCSO, and substituted it with a conviction for aggravated sexual assault under Section 10 of the POCSO Act. The judgment underscores the principle that medical evidence, while not decisive on its own, must be reconciled with the prosecution’s factual allegations, and that an unexplained inconsistency between alleged injury and medical findings can materially affect the burden of proof in POCSO prosecutions.