Thane, Feb 18 (PTI) A court in Maharashtra's Thane district on Thursday sentenced a 41-year-old man to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping his minor daughter.

Special judge (POCSO) Kavita D Shirbhate found the accused guilty of the charges of rape under the IPC and the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and fined him Rs 10,000.

The prosecution told the court that the victim then 14 years old was living with her father after her father got separated and the accused raped her intermittently since she was 10 years old.

The abuse came to light in September, 2018 when the victim approached a civic health centre, where she found out that she was pregnant, and subsequently lodged a police complaint against her father.

The prosecution examined five witnesses and the DNA of the foetus matched with that of the accused, additional public prosecutor Sandhya Jadhav said.

The judge accepted the prosecutions argument and sentenced the accused to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment, she said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)