In Sanjay Kamat vs. The State of Bihar (2015), Patna High Court's Division Bench of Justices Dharnidhar Jha and Ahsanuddin Amanullah had delivered a judgement dated July 6, 2015 upholding the judgment of conviction dated February 10, 2010 and order of sentence dated February 15, 2010 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge-II, Saharsa in Sessions Trial of 2008 in a rape offence of 2007. By the impugned judgment, Sanjay Kamat, the appellant was held guilty of committing an offence under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code and he, after being heard under Section 235 Cr.P.C., was directed to suffer rigorous imprisonment for life. Justice Jha concluded:"After apprising the evidence of witnesses, we come to the conclusion that the learned trial judge was perfectly justified, in face of the evidence available to him, to hold that the prosecution had succeeded in bringing the charge home to the present appellant and he appears appropriately passing the order of sentence. In the result, the appeal fails and the same is dismissed."The appellant filed an appeal against the High Court's judgment in the Supreme Court on April 25, 2025. It was verified on June 23, 2025. It came up for hearing on July on July 2, 2025 but was adjourned.
The appellant had appealed against the judgment of conviction and order of sentence in the High Court. The gist of the allegation was that while playing, a girl child of 6-7 years was lured into visiting the village fair where she could be getting some balloons from the appellant. The grandmother of the victim opposed the taking away of the victim but the appellant succeeded in his act. It was evening and dark and the little child did not come back. The victim was brought to her mother to tell her that it was this appellant who had handed the injured and bleeding little child to them to be handed over to her mother. The incident had occurred at about 5.00 P.M. on October 20, 2007.
The High Court observed: "In spite of the non-examination of the investigating officer, what we further find from the record is that the investigation was completed and the solitary appellant was sent up for trial which ended in the impugned judgment." It was authored by Justice Jha.
Justice Jha recorded that the trial court judge before proceeding to record the evidence of PW3, the victim of the occurrence, had put certain questions to her in order to judging her competence of appreciating wordly things and thus, her competence to retain facts so as to relate them at a later stage. The judgement reads: "We refrain ourselves from putting those words in this judgment on account of the privacy reasons, but we may note that the victim had indeed narrated the real facts concerning the commission of the offence with her. She had narrated the manner as to how she was ravished and what the appellant had done in that connection. That these two lines we put down only to convey the facts which were stated by PW3 and whatever she had stated or whatever the learned counsel who had appeared during trial on behalf of the appellant had elicited, appear to us quite an unequal a dual between the little child who could be not knowing the crafts of the court and the competence and ingenuity of a counsel in such matters. The questions which were put to the little girl could be as nauseating and disturbing as they could have been, we wish the trial court ought to have prohibited them from being put to the child." Justice Jha observed that those were words which could impart a sense of shame to anyone, "but the counsel was as ruthless in putting those words to the little child during her cross examination". It is apparent from her deposition sheet. He noted: "At any rate, the judges have very limited resources and power to intervene in matters of restraining cross-examination and the answers to those questions further confirm us in our view that it could be the appellant only who had committed the offence."
Justice Jha observed: "The examination of the investigating officer could have given only one evidence as to what was the place of occurrence. His non-examination or the non-examination of the persons of the neighbourhood to us do not appear material inasmuch as when a little child of 6-7 years was giving evidence forthrightly in court to the incident, it was immaterial for the court to look for any other evidence."
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