Jaipur: A division bench of Supreme Court Monday acquitted a man who has been in jail for 10 years in a sexual assault case involving a minor girl, holding that serious lapses in the investigation created a reasonable doubt about his identity as the perpetrator.A bench of Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Manmohan, in its Sept 7 judgment, set aside both the 2019 conviction of accused Dhanraj by a special Pocso court in Ajmer and a subsequent 2025 Rajasthan High Court order affirming it.The court observed that the FIR lodged under provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act at Kekri police station two days after the Dec 5, 2016, crime neither named the perpetrator nor mentioned any identifying physical characteristics.Dhanraj was arrested nearly two months later, but the investigating officer could not provide reliable grounds for his arrest beyond stating that it was made based on an informer’s input. Supreme Court held there was “no foundation for this assumption”.The bench also flagged the police’s failure to investigate complaints made by Dhanraj and his family alleging false implication at the behest of Shatrughan Gautam, current BJP MLA from Kekri.The investigating officer admitted receiving the complaints and affidavits but conceded he conducted no inquiry. The court said this deprived the investigation of material that could have either supported or disproved the defence plea.Another issue noted was the disappearance of a crucial sketch. During the investigation, the rape survivor and her father were taken to Jaipur, where a sketch of the assailant was prepared. The investigating officer, however, admitted that the sketch was neither available with him nor produced before the trial court.The court held that the sketch could have provided an objective test of whether the survivor’s initial description matched Dhanraj’s physical features.The court further noted that the survivor did not identify Dhanraj in court and admitted that she had been informed of his name by police before identification proceedings.Dhanraj’s counsel, Namit Saxena, argued that the prosecution case was undermined by doubtful identification, non-production of the police sketch, prior disclosure of Dhanraj’s name to the survivor and absence of DNA corroboration.
