Delhi HC halves a 30-year POCSO term: trial court ordered simple imprisonment where the Act demands rigorous
Justice Madhu Jain upheld the conviction of a man who took a minor schoolgirl away in December 2014 and held her for over two months, but cut the sentence under Section 6 of the POCSO Act from 30 years of simple imprisonment to 15 years of rigorous imprisonment.
The Delhi High Court on 2 November 2026 upheld the conviction of Mohd Anzar Ahmad for abducting a schoolgirl and sexually assaulting her repeatedly over two months. It then changed the sentence in two ways: shorter, and of a different kind.
Justice Madhu Jain reduced the term under Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act from 30 years of simple imprisonment to 15 years of rigorous imprisonment. The Act, as it stood in 2014-15, did not allow simple imprisonment for this offence at all.
The appeal was filed under Section 415(2) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. It challenged a trial court judgment of 3 August 2024 and an order on sentence of 15 January 2025, both from the Additional Sessions Judge, South East District, Saket Courts.
A disappearance outside school
On the morning of 5 December 2014, a Class 8 student left home for her government school and never came back. Her father complained to the police that evening, and an FIR for kidnapping under Section 363 of the Indian Penal Code was registered. The survivor is not named in this report.
About two months later, on 13 February 2015, she was recovered from Akbarpur in Uttar Pradesh and brought back to Delhi. She was around two months pregnant. The pregnancy was medically terminated on 20 February 2015.
The police arrested Mohd Anzar Ahmad, a man known to her family, at Akbarpur. He was already married. He has been in judicial custody since 13 February 2015.
The chargesheet named him under Sections 363, 376 and 506 of the IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act. On 7 October 2015 the trial court framed charges under Sections 363 and 506 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act. He pleaded not guilty.
Fourteen witnesses and a 30-year term
The prosecution examined 14 witnesses. The survivor told the trial court that the appellant, whom she called Mama, met her outside school, made her sit in an auto and covered her mouth with something. She became unconscious and woke up in a hut in Moradabad.
She said she was later taken to Bengal and then to Akbarpur, and that the assaults continued at each place. When she cried or asked to speak to her parents, she was beaten. At Akbarpur she found a chance to call her father.
Her father reached Akbarpur with the appellant’s wife and police officers. The appellant’s wife, examined as PW-12, turned hostile at trial. The trial court noted that she had since divorced the appellant and remarried.
In his statement under Section 313 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the appellant said the survivor was born in 1997 and was an adult. He claimed they were in love, had married and lived together, and that her parents had tortured her. He entered the witness box himself as the only defence witness.
The trial court convicted him under Sections 363 and 506 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act. On sentence it imposed five years and a fine of Rs 20,000 under Section 363, two years under Section 506, and 30 years with a fine of Rs 25,000 under Section 6. All were simple imprisonment and ran concurrently.
What the defence argued
Ms Aishwarya Rao, appearing for the appellant, argued that the prosecution story was riddled with inconsistencies. She pointed to references to both Akbarpur and Faizabad, to the lack of a recovery memo, and to the absence of any local police officer or public witness at the recovery.
She also said PW-8, the police officer who went to Akbarpur, could not recall the name of the railway station where the appellant was found. No departure entry had been made before the team left.
The defence relied on PW-3, the survivor’s mother, who admitted that the girl had at first refused to return home until a tabeez supplied by the appellant was removed. Counsel said this showed she went willingly. She added that DNA evidence did not link the appellant to the pregnancy and that the school record had not been independently verified.
Ms Urvashi Jain, for the survivor, said her testimony was consistent on every material point and that the pregnancy corroborated it. APP Ms Meenakshi Dahiya added that the school record fixed the age, so consent was no defence, and that 30 years was not excessive.
Proving she was under 18
Justice Jain framed the question for the appeal as follows:
“Whether the victim was below eighteen years of age on the date of the incident & whether her testimony establishes that the appellant took her away and subjected her to penetrative sexual assault?” (para 22)
On age, the prosecution examined PW-4, a retired principal of the primary school, who produced the original school record. It showed the survivor had been admitted to Class I in 2007 with a recorded date of birth that made her under 18 in December 2014.
Her mother could not recall the date of birth but said she had given the school an electricity bill and an election identity card. She denied deliberately recording a lesser age and denied that her daughter was an adult. The defence did not show that the affidavit she signed at admission was forged.
The appellant’s claim that the survivor was born in 1997 rested on no birth record. The court said it did not treat the parents’ estimates of her age, about 15, as a substitute for documents. It held that those statements matched the school record, and that the prosecution had proved she was a minor.
Her testimony and the sterling witness test
The judge began from the settled position that a conviction for a sexual offence can rest on the survivor’s word alone if it is cogent, consistent on material points and inspires confidence.
She cited Rai Sandeep v. State (NCT of Delhi) on the sterling witness. She also cited Nirmal Premkumar v. State, which sorts oral testimony into three classes.
Reading PW-1’s deposition with her statement under Section 164 of the CrPC and the evidence of her parents, the court found one consistent account. It covered who the appellant was, how she was taken, the repeated assaults, and how she was stopped from reaching her parents.
Cross-examination had produced no material contradiction. The suggestion that she was tutored was unsubstantiated. The circumstances the defence relied on did not, by themselves, show she went voluntarily.
The court added that once a girl is below 18, her consent to intercourse is immaterial under the POCSO Act. Willingness to accompany the appellant could not be a defence to penetrative sexual assault.
Pregnancy and an inconclusive DNA report
An ultrasound at AIIMS showed a single live foetus of eight weeks and five days. Along with the medical record and the testimony of the duty constable who logged the termination, the court treated this as strong corroboration that she had been subjected to intercourse in the period she described.
The Investigating Officer admitted he could not collect the termination documents because he was later suspended and retired. The court called this a lapse in the investigation that did not dislodge the evidence of pregnancy.
The forensic report did not help either side. It recorded that alleles could not be compared because a complete DNA profile was unavailable from the exhibits. In the court’s words, the result neither identified the appellant nor excluded him.
The judge also rejected the argument that force was not proved. A forensic report cannot say whether intercourse was consensual, she observed, and PW-1 had stated directly that she was rendered unconscious, assaulted despite resisting, and beaten when she cried.
Recovery lapses that changed nothing
The court accepted that the investigation had shortcomings. No independent witness was examined, no separate recovery memo was prepared, and no woman police officer travelled to Akbarpur. PW-8 admitted all of this in cross-examination.
PW-2 said the appellant’s wife led the police to the hut, while PW-8 said the complainant and the appellant did. The Investigating Officer explained the stray reference to Faizabad in a letter, saying it was written for the potency test and that the survivor was brought from Akbarpur.
The judge held that these discrepancies went to the manner of recovery, not the fact of it. The survivor herself said she was kept at Akbarpur and called her father from there. Her father, PW-8 and the Investigating Officer all placed the recovery on 13 February 2015.
The appellant’s former wife did not support the prosecution on the abduction, and the court did not rely on her. Convictions under Sections 363 and 506 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act were upheld.
Why 30 years could not stand
On sentence, the court first fixed the law that applied. The offences took place between December 2014 and February 2015, when Section 6 prescribed rigorous imprisonment of not less than ten years, extendable to life, and a fine.
The minimum was raised to 20 years by the 2019 amendment. Citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Satauram Mandavi v. State of Chhattisgarh, the judge held that the higher punishment cannot apply retrospectively because of Article 20(1) of the Constitution.
She then turned to proportionality. Gopal Singh v. State of Uttarakhand was her authority for weighing culpability, age, antecedents and the chance of reform.
She also cited the Supreme Court’s reduction of a life term to 15 years in Vipul Rasikbhai Koli Jankher, and a Chhattisgarh High Court reduction of a life term under Section 6 to 14 years in Satish Kumar Dhruv.
Section 386(b)(iii) of the CrPC lets an appellate court alter the nature or extent of a sentence, though not enhance it. Quoting Phool Kumari v. Superintendent, Central Jail, Tihar, the court noted that simple imprisonment carries no compulsory hard labour, while rigorous imprisonment does.
The sentence of simple imprisonment, the judge said, did not match Section 6, which expressly mandates rigorous imprisonment. Changing it was therefore not only a cut in years but also a correction of the kind of imprisonment.
On the facts, the aggravating circumstances were substantial: repeated assaults on a minor and their consequences. On the other side, the appellant was about 25 at the time, had no similar case against him and had been in custody since 13 February 2015.
The trial court had weighed those mitigating factors but, the High Court said, it “did not sufficiently explain why a sentence of thirty years” was warranted instead of a substantial but shorter term (para 56). Seriousness of the offence could not be the sole measure.
Order
The conviction under Sections 363 and 506 IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act stands. The sentence under Section 6 is “modified to 15 years' rigorous imprisonment” (para 58), with the Rs 25,000 fine and the 30-day default term unchanged.
The sentences under Sections 363 and 506 IPC, with their fines and default terms, are untouched. All substantive sentences continue to run concurrently, and the appellant gets set-off for the time already spent in custody. Remission and commutation rules apply as the law provides.
The appeal was partly allowed. Pending applications were disposed of, and copies went to the trial court and the Jail Superintendent for compliance. The judgment had been reserved on 14 October 2026.