A 35-year-old man who was arrested for allegedly raping his 15-year-old step-daughter in 2015 was acquitted on Thursday by the Kalyan Sessions Court after he spent seven years in prison.
The man was falsely implicated by his step-daughter, wife and the wife’s first husband in the case.
The girl had allegedly hatched the plan after watching a popular crime show on T.V. to hide her affair with her boyfriend and to reunite her parents.
The man, Vipul Narkar, was 28 and had his own printing press in 2014 when he met the girl’s mother at an eatery and fell in love with her. The woman was a divorcee and had two children, a 15-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. Narkar bought a flat in Dombivli for them and married the woman who was then 34. He also got admission for the children in a school.
A year later, in 2015, Narkar caught his step-daughter twice with a boy and scolded her. He told her to concentrate on her studies. In April 2015, the girl attempted suicide by consuming phenyl and was taken to a hospital. She told the authorities that her step-father sexually assaulted her. Narkar was arrested for rape under Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). Narkar was not so trong financially so he could not afford a lawyer to fight his case and continued to remain in jail.
In 2018, his lawyer, Ganesh Gholap, met him at Adharwadi jail. Gholap said, “I noticed Narkar was well behaved with everyone and helped most inmates in small chores like writing applications. He had a very beautiful handwriting and was fluent in English. I was intrigued and wanted to know his story. I started talking to him and hearing him out, decided to take his case. In 2019, I filed an application in the court and the proceedings began. However, they were stuck as the pandemic set in.”
The defence questioned 12 witnesses in the case including the girl, her three male friends, her principal, medical officers and neighbours.
Gholap said, “Her medical report did not show any signs of sexual assault. Her parents or school principal could not provide her birth certificate to prove that she was a minor at the time of the incident. We then decided to cross examine the girl. She told us that they sold the house brought by Narkar in Dombivli and went to live with her real father. She also told the court that her boyfriend refused to marry her and thus she attempted suicide. She got scared that Narkar would scold her for trying to elope. She used to watch a popular crime drama from where she got an idea to frame her step-father so that her parents too could reunite. She told the plan to her parents who agreed, she told the court.”
After going through the evidences presented before the court, Sessions court judge, AD Harne, acquitted Narkar from all charges of rape and POCSO in June 2022.
