The Gujarat High Court dismissed the bail application filed by a man accused of molesting his daughter. It also cited famous shlokas from Manusmriti and Padma Puran about the status and responsibility of the father and mother towards their daughter.
The man was arrested after his wife filed a complaint for molesting his 12-year-old daughter multiple times when she was away from home and he was alone with her at home. In the bail plea, the man claimed that his wife filed the FIR against him as the couple was not on good terms with each other. However, the HC did grant any credence to his claims and turned down the bail plea on Tuesday by making important observations about a father and daughter’s relationship as well as trauma of the girl who was subjected to molestation.
Justice Samir Dave said, citing the meaning of a shloka in Manusmriti staed: “An Acharya is greater than 10 Upadhyayas, a father is greater than a 100 Acharyas, and a mother is greater in glory than 1,000 fathers.”
He also cited another shloka that states: “One who gives birth, one who initiates, one who imparts knowledge, one who provides food and protects from fear, these five are considered as fathers.” The judge also cited a shloka from Padma Purana that states: “My Father is my dharma, my father is my heaven, he is the ultimate penance of my life.”
“The purity that a father-daughter relationship carries, when shattered in such a manner, obliterates the sanctity and belief in any existing relation. A daughter looks to her father to protect her from outside evils and when the very same protector rips her apart, the trauma one suffers as a consequence of such an act cannot even be described in simple terms,” Justice Dave said.
“A ‘sire’ is duty bound to discharge his fatherly obligations towards his children in a solemn way, but in total transgression of established norms and cherished legacy and also acting against law, the appellant-accused ravaged the chastity of his own daughter (including the step-daughter) not only singly but at multiple frequency,” the order mentioned.
“Rape/molestation is one such dark reality in the Indian society that devastates a women’s soul, shatters her self-respect and for a few, purges their hope to live. It shakes the insight of a woman/girl who once was a ‘happy person’, and had no clue of being a victim of the said horrifying and nightmarish encounters where the daughter had been raped/ molested by none else but her own progenitor,” the court observed.
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