IN THE HIGH COURT OF FIJI
AT LABASA
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Case No. HAC 16 of 2018

STATE

V

RAVNEEL SANDEEP PRASAD

Counsel	:	Miss D. Rao for the State
			Mr. A. Kohli with Miss R. Raj for the Accused

Date of Trial		:  	27, 28 and 29 March 2019
Date of Summing Up	: 	01 April 2019
Date of Judgment	: 	01 April 2019

JUDGMENT

1.	The accused faced trial in this Court of two counts of rape 	against the same 16 year old victim, once in October 2016 and 	once in March or April 2017.

2.	The three assessors after hearing closing speeches and my 	Summing Up returned with unanimous opinions or not guilty 	on both counts.

3.	The complainant whom I shall call Mere for the purposes of this 	judgment is the half-sister of the accused. At the time of the 	first complaint she was 15 years old and for the second 	complaint 16 years old. 

4.	She gave evidence that in October 2016 she accompanied her 	brother at 2am to her grandparents to collect a “machine “that 	he had left there. They had already been to the grandparents 	that evening but had returned home without the machine. En 	route to the grandparents the second time the accused (“R”) 	stopped the vehicle in a deserted bushy place on a side road 	and proceeded to rape her on the passenger seat in the vehicle’s 	front compartment. He then drove them both home where she 	kept silent, not even telling her mother who was awake and 	slept on the same bed as Mere.

5.	The second assault she testified to occurred some 5 or 6 months 	later in the Autumn of 2017. She was in bed sleeping after her 	mother had left the house for work. Her brother came into the 	room, locked the door and again raped her.

6.	The now 18 year old’s evidence was unsatisfactory in many 	respects. She was reluctant, hesitant and contradicted herself. 	She had difficulty in describing the logistics of each assault, 	especially for the earlier assault in the confines of the front 	passenger compartment of a 3 ton truck. 

7.	The evidence of the second prosecution witness, the Police 	Officer mainly confirmed the evidence of the complainant that 	was given to her by way of a statement made. She was however 	thrown into confusion about the two medical examinations that 	the young girl underwent. It had been found by examination 	that the girl was no longer a virgin.

8.	It was an allegation of the defence that this second prosecution 	witness had conspired with the complainant to invent a 	perpetrator of rape to protect a man she had been found with on 	February 16th in suspicious circumstances. This was denied by 	both witnesses and of course there is no evidence before the 	Court that would validate this conspiracy theory. The evidence 	of the accused that this man had taken her virginity was 	outrageous in its supposition in that there is no way that he 	could have known with whom she had had previous sexual 	activity.

9.	It is a fact however that these two alleged assaults were not 	complained of to anybody until the day after she had been 	found alone with another man in unusual if not suspicious 	circumstances  and a day after it had been found that she had 	been sexually active. 

10.	Although it is not a part of our law that a complaint of sexual 	assault must be made within a reasonable time, this Court finds 	that the timing and circumstances of the complaints coupled 	with the unsatisfactory prosecution evidence create a 	reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused and as a result.  I 	concur with the assessors findings and find him not guilty on 	each charge and acquit him of each count accordingly.	 

11.	That is the Judgment of the court.

				P. K. Madigan
				Judge
At Labasa
01 April 2019