The Madras High Court acquitted a death row convict of charges under the POCSO Act

The Madras High Court has acquitted a death row convict of aggravated sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO) 2012 and commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment only for the charge of murdering a nine-year-old girl.

Justices Anita Sumanth and Sunder Mohan passed the verdict, partially allowing an appeal preferred by convict Kakka alias Karunas in the Puducherry POCSO Act 2024 case in which the second accused Harikrishnan alias Vivekanandan died by suicide in jail before the trial began.

The Special Court for POCSO Act cases on 30 April 2026 convicted the appellant and sentenced him to death both for the charge under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. However, the Supreme Court upheld his conviction only for murder and reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.

The Division Bench came to the decision after hearing and cross-examining some witnesses during the hearing of the appeal, along with a reference made by the trial court to confirm the death sentences it had imposed on POCSO charges and murder charges.

The judges appointed senior counsel NR Elanga, assisted by A. Nagarajan and B. Arvind Srevatsa, to defend the appellant besides appointing counsel S. Sridevi as the convict told the court that he did not have the means to hire a lawyer himself.

While writing the verdict, Justice Mohan pointed out that the entire prosecution case was based on circumstantial evidence as there was no eye witness to the crime. Thus, the prosecution had to prove the defendant’s guilt without breaking the bond.

According to the prosecution, the two accused subjected the girl, their neighbor, to violent sexual assault at the residence of the other accused before strangling her to death on March 2, 2024 and dumping her body in a canal behind the crime scene.

The body was pulled out of the canal on 5 March 2024 and the Director General of Police, Puducherry, appointed a policewoman in the rank of Superintendent of Police on 6 March 2024 to investigate the case considering the gravity of the crime.

The Division Bench held that the prosecution had conclusively established the fact that the child victim was subjected to aggravated sexual assault and bludgeoned to death through medical evidence. However, he did not deal with the case of the second accused as he died on 16 September 2024 and the charges against him were dropped before the trial began.

As for the appellant, the judges said that none of the items that were recovered from the crime scene were found to contain his sperm or bloodstain. They refused to confirm the forensic analyst’s opinion that there was a “close match” between his touch/trace DNA, which was allegedly taken from the crime scene, and a sample of his blood.

They pointed out that the analyst did not send to the trial court the allele comparison chart between the touch/trace DNA of the complainant allegedly recovered from the dhoti belonging to the second accused and the blood sample of the appellant. When asked why, he told the jurors that the graph did not meet the minimum cutoff/threshold value.

In response to further questions raised by the High Court judges during his cross-examination as part of the preliminary ruling and appeal hearing, he said there was no gradation such as close or very close matches when comparing the allele(s). Forensic analysts were required to report only agreement, no agreement, or no opinion.

Furthermore, it was only in the High Court that it was first shown that what was compared to the convict’s blood sample was only touch/trace DNA and not semen or bloodstain. The complainant’s sperm was not even found in the vaginal swab of the child victim.

However, the Division Bench agreed with Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan that the prosecution succeeded in proving the “last seen” theory through the evidence of a local resident, Alphonse, who saw the victim’s child together with the appellant just hours before she was reported missing at her residence.

Although the witness took three days to report this to the police, who in turn took another three days to record his statement on 8 March 2024, the judges said such a lapse in the investigation would not in itself render the witness statements false.

The judges also said that the police established that the complainant was at the crime scene because strands of his hair were recovered from a pillow at the second accused’s residence. Further, the coconut rope recovered from the residence matched the coconut rope used to tie the child’s body.

Further, the complainant’s friend, Jawahar, told the police that he had gone to Chennai along with the appellant on 3 March 2024 and returned to Puducherry on 4 March 2024. During their visit, the complainant was agitated and nervous and asked whether the body dumped in the canal would float or sink.

Citing several other circumstances, the judges concluded that the appellant was most certainly guilty of murdering the child and examining the evidence. “However, the prosecution failed to establish by any admissible evidence that the accused had committed a penetrative sexual assault on the victim,” they said.

“Although we are convinced on the basis of the circumstances that the petitioner is guilty of an offense under Section 302 of the Criminal Code, our perception and inference cannot be considered infallible,” the judges observed, asking the probation officer for a report on the appellant’s conduct and commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment.

(Help to overcome suicidal thoughts is available on Tele-MANAS 14416 and Sneha Suicide Prevention Helpline 044-24640050.)

Published – 11 October 2026 23:50 IST