The Madras HC almost acquitted man who was accused of sexual assault thanks to a typo. In the typo the English word ‘Semen’ became ‘Semman’ (Tamil word for red sand). It so happened that a local court in Tamil Nadu was almost on the verge of allowing a child sexual assaulter who was convicted under the POCSO act due to a typographical error which appeared in the First Information Report (FIR).
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Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Typographical errors or typos can be embarrassing at its best and expensive at its worth. While businesses suffer losses due to an extra zero added, or an extra hyphen added here and there, there are times when the typos lead to some even graver consequences. At times, a typo can help a monster be unleashed and walk among freely with people.
Something similar to that happened recently at a local Tamil Nadu court where a child sexual assault accused was about to be acquitted due to a typo in an FIR. It so happened that in the FIR – the word ‘semen’ was misspelled as ‘semmen’ (red sand in Tamil). Thankfully, the Madras High Court took the matter in its own hands and reversed the judgement passed by the local court.
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Madras HC Intervenes, Accepts Plea of Victim’s Mother
The division bench of Justice P Velmurgan was the one who reversed the judgement made by the lower court when the Madras High Court was approached with an appeal by a woman against the acquittal of the accused who had assaulted the woman’s 2-year-old daughter.
2-year-Old Girl Sexually Assaulted by Neighbour
The root of the case goes back as far as 2017 when the woman’s daughter, then 2-years and 9 months old, was sexually assaulted by the man who was the woman’s neighbour. The police had then booked the man under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, the POCSO court subsequently acquitted the man stating the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond the point of a reasonable doubt.
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Defence of Accused took Advantage of Typo
After that, the mother of the victim took to the Madras High Court and this month, the HC finally reversed the acquittal and upheld the POCSO’s remedy of such an act, which is life imprisonment. Interestingly enough, the defence of the accused used the typo to their advantage and helped the man come closer to his acquittance.
The Curious Case of Semen and Semman
According to a Bar and Bench report, the order stated that during the case’s hearing, the woman’s statement, the word “semen” at multiple places was erroneously typed as “semman”.
“Taking advantage of that mistake, the defence stated that P.W.1 (the mother) has said in her evidence that she found “semman colour” which means red soil colour.”
The court also added that as per the police’s report, the woman had said “semen”, given the fact that the woman had seen a “white colour fluid” on her child. And hence, the court came to the conclusion that the word “semen” was mistyped as “semman”.
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“Local courts don’t apply their minds”: Madras HC
Madras HC Judge P Velmurugan also noted, “It is dangerous to write an English word in Tamil, which has totally turned the case of the prosecution, and admittedly, the defence side has taken flimsy defence that P.W.1 has stated as ‘semman colour’.
Further, the court also frowned upon the local court and said how sometimes the local courts don’t “apply their minds” and don’t “exercise their inherent power”.
“They are only searching for proof beyond reasonable doubt and taking advantage of the flaw in the investigation, giving the benefit of doubt to the accused. But in cases like this, we cannot give much importance to the technical ground of proof,”
-the court ruled.
