New Delhi, August 21
The Supreme Court has upheld the seven years’ rigorous imprisonment of a Punjab government schoolteacher for raping a class VIII student in the room after inviting her to the school for special tuition in science on a holiday 19 years ago.
A Bench of Mr Justice B. P. Singh and Mr Justice Altamas Kabir rejected the appeal of Dildar Singh, the teacher that a long time had passed after the incident that occurred on March 6, 1987 as he was now a married man and the victim had also got married, hence the sentence be reduced.
“This is not an usual case where such consideration may weight with this court in the matter of sentence. The appellant was a schoolteacher on whom rests the responsibility of building the character of students,” the court said.
Such a long time in getting the finality of the case was caused mainly due to abnormally lengthy proceedings before the trial court and the high court.
Apart from sentencing him to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment, the trial court had imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 on him, failing to pay of which, he was to undergo a further sentence of one year. His conviction was upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a judgement on
February 7, 2005.
“If a teacher is himself found guilty of such a heinous offence, no mitigating circumstance can be pleaded to reduce the sentence,” the court said.
According to the prosecution case, Dildar Singh had asked the student to come to the school for special coaching in
science practical on March 6, 1987 as some other students were also coming. He took her to the classroom and raped her.The girl under fear did not report the matter to anyone but her mother came to know of it after three months on June 26 when the girl complained of pain in the stomach and on examination it was found that she was pregnant.
Then only she told how the teacher had raped her and an FIR was registered against him.
The court rejected the teacher’s argument of delay in filing the FIR, holding that “in normal course of human conduct an unmarried girl would not like to give publicity to the traumatic experience she had undergone and would feel terribly embarrassed in narrating such incident.”
The court said the teacher deserved the severe punishment possible under the law for the rape of a girl who was not only a minor but also his student.
There was nothing wrong in the trial court order finding Dildar Singh guilty and the high court judgement upholding its finding, the Bench said, adding, “We find no reason to interfere with the concurrent findings of the facts on record by the courts below.”
