French diplomat charged with rape seeks PM's intervention

Bangalore, Aug 16: Suspended French consular official Pascal Mazurier, charged with sexual abuse of his minor daughter, has sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for expediting the trial in the case.

In a letter to Modi, 40-year old Mazurier, Consular Attache at the Consulate General of France here, has made an appeal to put the case on fast track as his grandmother was on death bed and wanted to see him.

"My grandmother's last wish is to see me," Mazurier, arrested on June 19, 2012 and now out on bail, said in the letter, a copy of which was released to the media. He was arrested after police registered a case against him under section 376 of IPC (punishment for rape) on a complaint by his estranged wife Suja Jones, accusing him of abusing their three-and-a-half years' old child. She has also alleged domestic violence by him.

Mazurier said the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) requires that the minor children of parents who hail from different nations and cultures must have contact with both their parents. He said he was deprived of speedy justice even after 25 months after his wife made allegations against him.

"I have not been able to maintain contact with my three innocent children, who loved me so much, and in turn, they are forgetting their national language and culture, their family history," he said.

Mazurier has sought the PM's intervention for expediting the trial in the case

Mazurier said he has faith in the Indian judiciary and ask the authorities concerned to provide "speedy justice not for me but also for my daughter". On February 11 this year, a sessions court here framed charges against Mazurier under IPC section 376, after it earlier refused to discharge him on ground that there was sufficient evidence for him to face trial. Police filed an additional charge sheet against Mazurier in January 2013, with a detailed report of doctors who said the accused sodomised and raped his daughter for two years. Mazurier's counsel had claimed that his client was "innocent".

PTI