Mentally Ill Woman's Testimony Valid: Supreme Court To Rape Convict

The 36-year-old woman, who is suffering from 70 per cent disability and was raped in Uttarakhand in September 2015.

The testimony of a mentally ill woman, who had narrated the incident of rape committed upon her in question answer form before the trial court, has nailed the offender as the Supreme Court Thursday upheld his conviction while terming her statement as "credible". The 36-year-old woman, who is suffering from 70 per cent disability and was raped in Uttarakhand in September 2015, had testified before the trial court in question answer form as oath could not be administered to her since she was unable to understand its meaning. The trial court, which had convicted and sentenced the man to 10-years in jail in October 2016, had noted in its verdict that during her cross-examination the woman had rightly identified the photo frames of father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi and former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. A plea filed by the convict challenging the March 2019 verdict of the high court, which had dismissed his appeal and affirmed the trial court's judgement, came up for hearing before a bench of justices L Nageswara Rao and Aniruddha Bose.