![\"Court](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-47529300,imgsize-110164,width-400,height-225,resizemode-72\/47529300.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nNew Delhi:<\/span> A court has convicted a man of attempting to rape a differently abled woman, relying on the testimony of her mother and a psychiatric assessment that said the survivor had a social age of \u201cone year and two months\u201d and suffered from \u201cprofound social intellectual impairment\u201d.Social age is a measure of a person\u2019s capacity to have interpersonal relations and emotional maturity, among other things.The court held that the 18-year-old woman, with hearing and speech impairment, was completely dependent on her mother and was not competent to testify. Additional sessions judge Amit Sehrawat found the mother\u2019s eyewitness account \u201cconsistent and trustworthy\u201d. He concluded that the prosecution had proved the charge beyond reasonable doubt.The prosecution, led by Aaditya Kumar, said the crime happened in April 2022, when the woman and her mother were sleeping outside their jhuggi. The mother woke up to the woman’s screams and found the accused, Mohd Shaan, committing a \u201cwrong act\u201d on her. The man was arrested.During trial, the defence sought to cast a doubt on the prosecution\u2019s case by pointing to a six-hour delay by the survivor in filing the complaint. The court rejected the contention. Judge Sehrawat said: \u201cThe victim is a specially-abled child and if a misdeed has taken place with her, then it is matter of ordinary prudence that, first of all, the family members shall console and settle the victim and thereafter only the matter can be reported.\u201dThe court took note of the woman\u2019s medical assessment by the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences. Its report, apart from mentioning the woman\u2019s social age, said that she had a \u201ccorresponding social quotient of 8, indicating profound intellectual impairment.\u201d Keeping this in mind, the woman was not made a witness.The defence cited the absence of independent witnesses. The court, however, viewed this as a lapse in the investigation. \u201cThe reliability of the complainant cannot be decided merely on the basis of lapse on the part of IO,\u201d it said.Mohd Shaan denied the allegations and claimed that the case stemmed from a past quarrel. The court rejected the defence. \u201cOnly on the basis of previous issues, the reliability of a complainant cannot be doubted,\u201d it said. Rather, the defence needed to give “substantial proof\u201d, which was missing, the judge said.<\/div>\n