Madras High Court acquits death row convict from POCSO Act charge

The Madras High Court partly allowed Kakka alias Karunas’s appeal. It upheld his conviction for murdering a nine-year-old girl but acquitted him of aggravated sexual assault under Section 6 of the POCSO Act. The court also changed his death sentence for murder to life imprisonment. This matters because the judgment separated the evidence supporting the two offences.

The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence because nobody witnessed the crime. The court accepted that the child had been sexually assaulted and killed, and it accepted evidence placing the appellant with her before she disappeared. However, it rejected the forensic analyst’s description of a “close match” between touch DNA and the appellant’s blood sample.

The court also relied on hair found on a pillow and matching coir ropes when upholding the murder conviction. The second accused, Harikrishnan alias Vivekanandan, had died by suicide before trial, so charges against him had abated. Karunas therefore remains convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, commonly called POCSO, protects people under 18 from sexual assault, sexual harassment and child pornography. It creates child-focused procedures for reporting, investigation and trial. The law treats children as especially vulnerable and imposes strict penalties for serious offences.

Section 6 deals with aggravated penetrative sexual assault. Aggravating circumstances can include factors such as the offender’s relationship to the child, the child’s age, or serious harm caused. The provision carries very severe punishment, including imprisonment for the remainder of the offender’s natural life and, in legally specified cases, the death penalty.

In this case, the special POCSO court convicted Kakka under Section 6 and imposed death. The High Court agreed that medical evidence established sexual assault, but it found that the prosecution had not sufficiently connected Kakka to that assault. It therefore acquitted him on the POCSO charge while retaining the murder conviction.

The case originally involved two accused people. They were Kakka alias Karunas, the appellant before the High Court, and Harikrishnan alias Vivekanandan, described as the second accused. The prosecution alleged that both men sexually assaulted the nine-year-old girl and killed her.

Harikrishnan died by suicide inside prison on September 16, 2024, before the trial began. Because he died before commencement of trial, the charges against him abated. The High Court therefore did not examine the case against him. His death ended the criminal proceedings against him in this case.

Kakka continued to face trial and appeal proceedings. The special POCSO court convicted him under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, imposing death for both charges. The High Court later acquitted him of the POCSO charge, upheld the murder conviction, and changed the punishment to life imprisonment.

Circumstantial evidence proves a crime through connected facts rather than direct testimony from someone who saw it happen. Because no eyewitness described the crime, the prosecution had to build a complete chain. Each circumstance needed reliable proof, and together they had to point to the accused rather than leave a reasonable alternative.

The prosecution relied on several circumstances. Alphonse said he saw the child with Kakka hours before she was reported missing. Hair strands allegedly linked Kakka to a pillow at the second accused’s residence. A coir rope recovered there matched the rope used to tie the child’s body. The body was found in a canal three days after the alleged crime.

The High Court accepted enough of these circumstances to sustain the murder conviction. But it did not accept the disputed DNA evidence as proof of the sexual assault charge. The decision shows why each link must be tested separately, even when the overall case contains several incriminating facts.

Touch or trace DNA is a small amount of genetic material transferred when a person contacts an object. It may come from skin cells or other biological material. Because the quantity can be low and the material may be mixed or transferred indirectly, analysts must describe the result accurately and show how the comparison was made.

Here, the disputed sample was touch or trace DNA reportedly lifted from a dhoti belonging to the second accused. It was compared with Kakka’s blood sample. The analyst called the result a “close match,” but did not send the trial court an allele comparison chart. He told the judges that the chart failed to meet the minimum cutoff or threshold value.

During questioning, the analyst also accepted that forensic reporting used “match,” “no match,” or “no opinion,” not gradations such as “close” or “very close.” The High Court therefore refused to rely on that opinion. It also noted that Kakka’s semen was not found in the child’s vaginal swab.

Changing a death sentence to life imprisonment removes the immediate punishment of execution while keeping the murder conviction in place. The person remains subject to imprisonment under the sentence imposed by the court. The article does not state the exact conditions, minimum term, or release rules that may apply to this life sentence.

In Kakka’s case, the special court had imposed death for both the POCSO charge and the murder charge. The High Court rejected the POCSO conviction, so that punishment no longer stands. It upheld the Section 302 murder conviction but replaced the capital punishment with life imprisonment. The death-sentence reference therefore did not succeed for him.

The practical result is a narrower conviction and a less severe sentence. Kakka remains legally responsible for the child’s murder, but the High Court found the evidence did not prove his participation in the aggravated sexual assault beyond the required standard. Any further consequence depends on applicable law and later proceedings, which the article does not describe.

The beyond-reasonable-doubt standard requires reliable proof of guilt, not merely a strong suspicion. Criminal punishment can take away liberty and reputation. The death penalty is irreversible, so courts must be especially careful that every required element of the offence is proved and that evidence is not overstated.

This case illustrates the distinction. The High Court accepted several circumstances supporting the murder conviction, including the last-seen evidence, hair found on a pillow, and a matching coir rope. But it rejected the analyst’s “close match” description because the required allele chart was absent and the reporting categories did not include that label. The court also noted that no semen or blood stain linked Kakka to the assault.

Thus, multiple circumstances can support one conclusion without proving every charge. Requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt helps courts separate reliable links from weak ones. Here, it allowed the court to uphold murder while acquitting Kakka of aggravated sexual assault and rejecting the death penalty.