HC acquits 6 police officers in gangrape case

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has acquitted six police officers, sentenced to life term by a lower court for gangraping a 17-year-old Scheduled Caste girl.

A division bench, comprising Justices M Chockalingam and M Venugopal, set aside the sentence of Villupuram Sessions Court for want of evidence.

The bench said neither was proper identification parade conducted to identify the assailants nor prosecution proved that there was a nexus between the accused and the crime.

"It is well settled law that in the absence of identification parade, the court can believe the evidence of victim, who identified the accused before the court, but not in all the cases and that should be in exceptional circumstances," the Judge said.

"The victim had given a statement earlier that she did not know the assailants. She had also given a statement after a period of three years that she could not identify them. Therefore, when she identified the accused in Court hall after 13 years, the Court should have rejected the evidence, but it has believed her version," the Judge said.

The case against the police officers was that they picked the girl from her aunt's house at Athiyur village in Puducherry on the night of July 29, 1993 for identifying her cousin in connection with another case. They took her to a remote place and allegedly raped her, before dropping her back at the aunt's house.