How an Instagram post led to 20-year jail term for tutor who sexually exploited minor student

 Uploaded in 2019, the post gives details of the abuse the teenager suffered when she was 13. In its judgment, trial court placed strong reliance on testimony of victim, her parents.

APOORVA MANDHANI, The Print, 26 February, 2024, New Delhi: An Instagram post by an 18-year-old girl from Prayagraj has now led to a trial court in the city awarding 20 years jail term to a man above 60 years of age. 

Uploaded in April 2019 — in the aftermath of a MeToo movement that had gripped the country — her post was a detailed account of her sexual abuse by her private tutor, Sunil Dua, over a few months between October 2013 and February 2014. She was in class 7 then and was 13 years old.

It was her post that alerted her parents to what she had gone through. 

Talking to ThePrint, her father now recalls that as soon as he read her post, they decided to file a complaint against Dua. 

“We did not allow any time to lapse after her post. There was no time spent in any discussions,” he said. The FIR was filed on 14 April 2019, and thus, the trial began.

During the hearing, the father also read out a statement to the court. “If a paedophile is hidden, he can damage so many lives. I told the judge that a paedophile is like a serial killer. He (Dua) was a loner, never got married and he never revealed his address,” he told ThePrint.

The incident, he added, has left a deep wound on the daughter’s psyche — who went through mental agony and has since suffered from anxiety and Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She also struggled to focus on her studies and is currently a student of psychology. 

In a judgment delivered earlier this month, a trial court in Prayagraj awarded 20 years rigorous imprisonment to Dua. 

In doing so, it noted that the victim “gathered courage from the then ongoing MeToo campaign on Instagram and posted the alleged incident on social media.”

“I came to know that he is still taking tuition for children. When I saw his advertisement for coaching, I felt a responsibility to ensure that what accused Sunil did to me should not happen to anyone else,” the girl told the court in her examination-in-chief as quoted in the judgment.

From dining table to the room

Dua entered into the lives of the victim’s family at a famous restaurant. He introduced himself as a tutor who taught many children from the victim’s school. 

“He used to be at a very famous restaurant in the city, and he used to stalk his prey from there. So he seemed like a seasoned criminal,” her father recalled.

At the time, the parents agreed to give him a chance. 

Initially, Dua used to teach her at the dining table at their home. However, after a week or two, Dua told her mother that the dining table, which was at the centre of the house, wasn’t the most conducive place for studying. They were then allotted a room in front of the kitchen. 

A few days later, he again managed to get a different room — this time one without a direct view — allotted for the tuition, citing the height of the computer table as an inconvenience.

Dua had also been instructed by the victim’s mother to teach the girl when she returned from her job. He followed that direction for a few days but soon began visiting earlier than the mother got home.

Removed from the centre of the house, Dua was now prepared to begin his abuse. 

According to the court documents, he would scold the victim a lot and ensure that she was scared of him. 

He then began talking to her sexually, told her about his sexual relationship with his girlfriend, and made her watch porn. Whenever she would express her discomfort with his behaviour, he would complain to her mother about her not studying. 

According to the order, he even threatened suicide to compel her to get naked before him. 

On Valentine’s Day in 2014, Dua made her touch his private parts.

On 16 February, 2014, she told her mother to ask him not to come that day. This eventually led to an argument between the victim’s mother and Dua, resulting in the tuition being discontinued. 

However, Dua was relentless. 

According to the statement of the victim and her parents, he continued to call the home landline number and was even spotted outside her school. It was only after her father’s police complaint in 2014 that he stopped bothering the family.

But the damage had already been done. 

‘A pious relationship’

The incident led to “nightmares and panic attacks” for the victim over the next few years. 

It all came to a boil in 2019, after the victim turned 18. She put up a post detailing her ordeal on Instagram. 

An FIR was lodged right away and Dua was arrested within days. The victim told the magistrate in her statement under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) that Dua used to touch her private parts and used to make her touch his. She also raised allegations of digital penetration. 

In November 2019, the Allahabad High Court also rejected his bail application. 

The HC order especially pointed out that, at the time of the incident, the relationship between the victim and the accused “was a pious one”. 

It even spoke of the shastras, saying that a teacher is “bound to have good moral character without having any ambition of materialistic pleasure and is restrained to make false speeches to his pupil”. 

During the trial, Dua also claimed that he had prostate cancer, and filed an application for summoning the clerk of AIIMS in his defence evidence. However, the trial court rejected this application, with the finding that prima facie the accused is not suffering from cancer.

‘Character defamation’

In the trial court, Dua and his lawyers tried all defence tactics to discredit the victim. He told the court that the victim had initiated the case for “fame”. 

His lawyers alleged that she made “false and baseless allegations” after falling into the “Me-Too trap”. However, the court called these allegations “meaningless and unreasonable”. 

“No educated victim or her educated family members can try to gain fame with the false accusation of a heinous act of rape on their daughter studying in class 7 by her adult teacher. The accused is not such a famous personality that the victim wanted to get accolades by associating her name with him,” it observed. 

Dua had also relied on the fact that the victim had refused to get herself medically examined. 

However, the court rejected this contention, pointing out that the FIR was lodged years after the incident, and that even if she was medically examined, there would be no possibility of finding any evidence in support of the crime. 

While Dua had submitted that she refused to get medically examined because that would have exposed her “character”, the court thwarted all attempts of “character defamation” of the victim.

The court also opined that the delay in filing of the FIR did not raise doubts over the credibility of the prosecution story. 

It asserted that there was “sufficient and satisfactory reason” for the delay, because “at that time she was a student, who perhaps did not even properly understand the meaning of all the things that were happening to her.” 

“She could not muster enough courage to tell anything to anyone against her teacher. There was a natural fear in her mind in view of the relationship between guru and disciple,” the court added.

‘Solid and irrefutable’

For the family, the trial court’s judgment is a big win. 

“We were very disturbed. For six years, all we did in the family was discuss her condition…Because till the moment the sentence was passed, we were on the tenterhooks,” the victim’s father told ThePrint.

In its judgment, the trial court placed strong reliance on the testimony of the victim and her parents. 

It referred to Supreme Court judgments, which have ruled that in rape cases, the conviction can be based on the sole testimony of the victim. 

“It is clear that the events described by the victim are detailed on a day-to-day basis…The allegations of the victim are solid and irrefutable, which is also corroborated by PW1 (mother) and 2 (father) describing the conduct of the victim and the accused,” the trial court observed 

It has now found Dua guilty under Section 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Section 4 (penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act 2012. 

While sentencing him to 20 years of jail term, the court noted, “The accused in the present case is an educated person above 60 years of age. Considering his age, it is possible that after being in prison for 20 years, he will not be capable of teaching.”

(Edited by Richa Mishra)