The Delhi High Court has refused to interfere with the conviction of a man accused of sodomising an 11-year-old homeless boy.

In a judgment passed on August 10, Justice Chandrasekharan Sudha upheld the trial court’s August 2025 decision to convict him under Section 377 (unnatural offences) IPC and Section 6 (Punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.

The court, however, modified the trial court’s 20-year jail term to ten years on the grounds that at the time of the offence, the corresponding sentence was a decade.

Section 6 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act became punishable with a minimum term of 20 years with effect from August 16, 2019.

The minor alleged that in November 2016, the accused sexually assaulted him while he was sleeping under a railway bridge at Kashmere Gate.

The incident was reported on the police helpline by some social workers, who had organised a programme in the area for providing free medical aid to the homeless, after the minor informed them about it.

The accused’s counsel claimed that he had been falsely implicated. He argued that the prosecution failed to prove the boy was under 12 years of age and that there were several inconsistencies in his testimony regarding the incident and the dress he was wearing.

The court, however, said the boy’s inability to state his exact age or date of birth or other specific details would not benefit the accused.

It said although in his testimony, the survivor claimed that he was about 15 years of age, given his social background, it was “unrealistic” to expect him to know his exact age.

The school record showed his date of birth as October 12, 2005, making him 11 years old at the time of the incident, the court observed.

The court also held that the absence of any external injuries on the minor was not sufficient to discredit his otherwise “consistent and trustworthy testimony”.

Published - August 15, 2026 10:49 am IST