Anakapalle: POCSO court awards 20 years jail term to teenager for raping 7-year-old

Anakapalle: A POCSO court has sentenced an 18-year-old boy to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl in Andhra Pradesh's Anakapalli district.

The court also ordered the government to pay compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the survivor within 30 days of receipt of the order.

The Case

According to the deputy superintendent of police (DSP) of Anakapalli district (Disha police station) Malla Maheswara Rao, the incident took place on May 8, 2022, in Chodavaram Mandal.

The victim girl’s parents are daily wage laborers and the girl is studying in the second standard in the school. The parents of the girl had gone to Anakapalli for work after preparing food and left the children at home.

While the girl was playing on the road, the accused residing opposite the victim’s house took her to his house and assaulted her sexually. The same act was repeated by the accused teenager on the next day too by taking her to a cashew nut plantation near the hillock of the village after the girl’s parents had gone to work.

Later her mother lodged a police complaint.

Based on the complaint, a case was registered under section 376 of IPC, section 5 (1) (m) read with 6 of the POCSO Act 2012.

DSP Mahesh said that the juvenile court recommended that the accused is not a juvenile. The case was transferred to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) court.

The POCSO court convicted him on Monday by saying that he should serve in the juvenile home till he crosses 18 years, and he should be shifted to civil jail.