Srinagar: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has dismissed the bail application of a man facing trial under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, holding that medical, forensic and electronic evidence gathered during investigation could not be brushed aside merely because the minor victim and her father have resiled from their earlier statements during trial.
Justice Sanjay Parihar, dismissing the plea of the accused Mahir Ahmad Khachoo upheld an earlier order of the trial court that had also refused the accused bail.
Khachoo faces trial in FIR No. 30/2025 registered at Police Station Parimpora, booked under Sections 137(2), 64 and 65 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita read with Sections 3/4 of the POCSO Act.
According to the prosecution, the victim, around 15 years of age, went missing after stepping out to a local event in the Parimpora area of the city on April 13, 2025, prompting her father to lodge a missing report.
She returned home the following morning and is stated to have disclosed to her family that she had been taken away and sexually assaulted by a person she had encountered at the venue.
The prosecution’s case also draws on a digital transaction allegedly linking the accused’s movements to the victim’s account of the incident, along with the recovery of certain articles from the alleged scene following a disclosure attributed to the accused.
Medical examination of the victim reportedly found evidence suggestive of recent sexual intercourse, and forensic samples yielded a mixed DNA profile — one contributor matching the victim, the other male and unidentified in the absence of a reference sample.
During trial, however, the victim turned hostile and did not support the prosecution’s version in her trial court testimony, and her father too stepped back from the case.
Cross-examined on her earlier statement, she is recorded as telling the court that the case had taken a toll on her family and her own life, and that she and her father wished to be done with the proceedings.
The order does not attribute her reversal to any specific cause such as pressure or inducement, and the court noted that no such inference could be drawn without material on record to support it.
The defence argued that this shift left the accused’s identity as the offender in doubt and cited precedents where courts had granted bail in similar circumstances.
The prosecution, represented by Senior AAG Mohsin Qadri, countered that the case did not rest on the victim’s testimony alone, pointing to the identification proceedings, forensic material and other corroborating evidence collected during investigation.
Invoking the statutory presumption under Section 29 of the POCSO Act and Supreme Court precedent cautioning against acquittals merely because witnesses turn hostile, the court held that the victim’s testimony did not amount to an “unequivocal exoneration” of the accused, and that the evidentiary effect of her reversal would have to be assessed by the trial court once the evidence concluded.
The court clarified that its observations were confined to the bail application and would not influence the trial court’s independent appreciation of evidence.
