Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

*******Two slides of her vaginal swab were prepared, sealed and handed over to police for chemical examination. She has also been referred for radiological examination for determination of her age and her report is Exhibit P-10. For determination of her age, she was radiologically examined at Maharani Hospital, Jagdalpur by PW-9/Dr. Govind Singh, who determined the radiological age of the victim is 12 to 15 years and his report is Exhibit P-17, which is based on the joints of various bones of the body. With respect to the date of birth of the victim, the police has seized the school register from Primary School, Girhola and after retaining the attested true copy of the school register, the original register was returned back to the school and the attested true copy of the school register is Exhibit P-15C. An admission and discharge certificate (exhibit P-16) has also been issued by the Headmaster of the school and according to said school record, the date of birth of the victim is 24.03.2003. Spot map (exhibit P-3) was prepared by the police and P-4 was prepared by the Patwari. The appellant was arrested on 30.09.2015 and he too was sent for his medical examination to Community Health Centre, Charama, where PW-3/Dr. R.D. Koreti has medically examined him and gave his report (exhibit P-

12. Another piece of evidence with respect to the age of the victim is the ossification test report (exhibit P-17), which is conducted by the PW-9/Dr. Govind Singh. He stated in his evidence that on 12.10.2015, he radiologically examined the various joints of the body of the victim and came to the conclusion that her radiological age is more than 12 years but less than 15 years. He admitted in his cross examination that there might be some effect of environment or climate in the development of bones. He admitted that he issued the report (exhibit P-

17) considering the margin of 3 years of either side as per the Modi's medical jurisprudence. He further admitted that his report is including the margin of 3 years on either side. Nothing could be elicited from the evidence of this witness also, so that his evidence could be disbelieved and could be hold that the radiological age of the victim is more than 15 years.

13. In the matter of Ramdeo Chauhan v. State of Assam, (2001) 5 SCC 714, the Hon'ble Supreme Court has held in Para 51 and 52 as under:

"51. In his report the doctor has detailed all the data on which he reached his conclusion. I do not propose to extract all such data here except pointing out that such data collected by Dr B.C. Roy is in consonance with the guidelines provided in the textbooks on medical jurisprudence (vide Modi's Medical Jurisprudence and Jhala & Raju's Medical Jurisprudence). Ossification test is done for multiple joints, for which the radiological report was obtained. The margin of error according to authorities on medical jurisprudence can be two years either way as the maximum. In this context it is useful to extract the relevant passage from Jhala & Raju's Medical Jurisprudence (6th Edn., p. 198):