A court in India's Madhya Pradesh reduced the sentence of a man, convicted of raping a mentally challenged minor, from life imprisonment to 20 years in jail saying that the accused is married and has four children to support. 

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A division bench of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Devnarayan Mishra in Jabalpur bench of the high court delivered the verdict recently. 

"Learned trial court has not given any reason for awarding life imprisonment for remainder of life and looking to the fact that appellant is married person, he was going through his youth and at the time of commission of offence, his age was 33 years, he has 4 children and a family to support, some leniency be shown in the matter of sentence," the court said while giving the judgement. 

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The survivor is a minor with a 60 per cent mental disability. She alleged that the accused was her neighbour and sexually abused her. 

As per the legal documents, the survivor was 14 to 15 years of age at the time of the assault. 

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Moreover, forensic evidences confirmed the presence of the accused's DNA and his sperm on the survivor's vaginal slide. 

The 33-year-old was convicted under Section 5(k) (committing penetrative sexual assault on child after taking advantage of the child’s mental or physical disability) of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Section 376(2)(L) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).  

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He was punished to spend rest of his life in jail and a fine of ₹20,000. 

The accused had challenged the judgement claiming he was innocent.

The trial court was failed to justify the life imprisonment granted to him without parole. 

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The accused demanded some leniency toward him saying that he was 33-year-old at the time of incident and now he has a wife and four children to take care of. 

(With inputs from agencies)