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Judgment
The appellant submits that the appellant is now married to the survivor and the marriage took place in the year 2017.
Quite alarmingly, there does not appear to have been any denial on the part of the appellant in course of the trial regarding the age attributed to the survivor. The incident is of the year 2014 and the survivor was described in the first information report to be eight years old by her mother. Though the mother and a possible witness to the incident, the grandmother, turned hostile in course of the trial, the conviction in this case is founded on the oral testimony of the survivor.
When the survivor testified in court in the year 2016, her age is recorded to be 10 years. In such circumstances, particularly in the light of the survivor’s age not being disputed at the trial, it is difficult to accept that the survivor could have been of marriageable age in 2017 when the appellant claims to have married her. The appellant also submits that they have an issue.
Since the appellant seeks to apply for additional evidence to be adduced as to the age of the survivor, let the matter stand over for three weeks for receipt of the relevant application.
List on December 15, 2022.