The Bombay High Court has partly allowed an appeal filed by a man convicted of sexually assaulting a minor girl in Mumbai's Mahim area back in 2014, reducing his life sentence to 12 years of rigorous imprisonment while also changing the specific POCSO provision under which he stood convicted.
A division bench of Justice Manish Pitale and Shreeram V. Shirsat delivered the verdict on August 21, 2026, in an appeal that had been pending before the court since 2018.
Background of the Case
According to the prosecution, the appellant, Vijay Ramesh Dantani, had befriended the victim's father, who lived on a footpath in the Mahim area with his four children and earned his living selling garlands. The two men would often drink together, and Dantani sometimes slept near the family at night.
In October 2014, the child, then around 11 years old, told a woman in the neighbourhood that Dantani had assaulted her while she slept. Her father approached the police, and a case was registered under Section 376 of the IPC along with provisions of the POCSO Act. A trial court convicted Dantani in 2017 under Section 6 of the POCSO Act and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Court Observations
Before the High Court, the defence argued that there was an unexplained four-day delay in filing the FIR, that the victim's statements carried inconsistencies about the date and details of the incident, and that CCTV footage from a nearby camera was never collected by investigators.
The bench held that minor discrepancies in a child witness's account do not weaken an otherwise reliable prosecution case, observing that courts must look at the broader probability of a case rather than being "swayed away by minor contradictions."
At the same time, the bench accepted two of the defence's points - that the prosecution had not proved the assault happened more than once, and that the victim's age was not conclusively established, since the ossification test used typically carries a margin of error of a year or two.
The Decision
The court upheld the conviction under Section 376 IPC but modified the POCSO conviction from Section 6 to the less severe Section 4. Taking into account Dantani's clean record and the nearly 12 years he had already spent in custody, the bench reduced his sentence from life imprisonment to 12 years of rigorous imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 1,000.
The Rs 25,000 compensation earlier awarded to the victim was upheld.
Case Details
- Case Title: Vijay Ramesh Dantani vs. State of Maharashtra & Anr.
- Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 101 of 2018
- Judges: Justices Manish Pitale and Shreeram V. Shirsat
- Decision Date: August 21, 2026
