New Delhi, March 25 -- The Delhi high court on Tuesday acquitted Geeta Arora alias Sonu Punjaban and Sandeep Bedwal in a case involving the trafficking of a 12-year-old girl for prostitution.

A bench of Chandrashekharan Sudha set aside the July 2020 trial court judgment that had convicted Punjaban and sentenced her to 24 years' imprisonment, and Bedwal to 20 years, holding that the prosecution's case rested primarily on the survivor's testimony, which suffered from material contradictions and inconsistencies.

In the 71-page judgment, the court noted significant inconsistencies in the survivor's statements from the FIR to her testimony before the magistrate and the trial court, including discrepancies in the year of the incident, the seq...