Bengaluru: A fast-track sessions court in Bengaluru on Tuesday sentenced a 70-year-old man to 20 years imprisonment for sexually assaulting his minor granddaughter between 2015 and 2020. The elderly man first assaulted her when she was in Class 3.
Special judge KN Roopa passed the orders and also imposed a fine of Rs 1.3 lakh on the accused. The septuagenarian was arrested in January 2020 following a complaint filed by the victim's mother. The accused had spent about six months in judicial custody and was released on bail in June 2020. He was taken to Bengaluru Central Prison soon after the court sentenced him.
The accused, as per the inputs received, used to watch porn videos on his phone, show the same to his granddaughter, and then sexually assault her. He continued this behaviour from 2015 to 2020 and threatened to kill her father if she revealed the act to anyone. The incident came to the fore in 2020 when the victim told her mother about what had been happening for years. She was in Class 8 when she disclosed the incident.
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Later, a case was registered at the Kumaraswamy Layout Police Station in Bangalore under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act based on a complaint filed by the victim's mother. Public prosecutor P. Krishnaveni argued for the complainant. Krishnaveni said that 11 witnesses, including the survivor's mother, were deposed before the court. Statements of the witnesses and the survivor, along with the medical reports, helped in securing the conviction, she said.
