Balaji Sarjerao Kamble v. State of Maharashtra
Bombay High CourtMANU/MH/1957/2017Bench: J. A.S. Gadkari, J. Bharati Dangre
The Bombay High Court held that young children — especially those below 6-8 years of age — do not have a reliable sense of time, dates, and temporal sequence. It is unreasonable to expect a young child victim to pinpoint the exact date of a traumatic sexual assault. Courts must make reasonable allowances for the testimony of young victims when it comes to dates and time. A vague or wide date range in an FIR does not by itself render the prosecution's evidence unreliable, and the absence of an exact date is not a reason to disbelieve the child's account of what happened. The accused was convicted.