Having heard the learned counsel for the parties we are of the opinion that the High Court was not justified in reversing the conviction of the respondent and recording the order of acquittal. It is true that the golden thread which runs throughout the cob-web of criminal jurisprudence as administered in India is that nine guilty may escape but one innocent should not suffer. But at the same time no guilty should escape unpunished once the guilt has been proved to hilt. An unmerited acquittal does no good to the society. If the prosecution has succeeded in making out a convincing case for recording a finding as to the accused being guilty, the Court should not lean in favour of acquittal by giving weight to irrelevant or insignificant circumstances or by resorting to technicalities or by assuming doubts and giving benefit thereof where none exists. A doubt, as understood in criminal jurisprudence, has to be a reasonable doubt and not an excuse for finding in favour of acquittal. An unmerited acquittal encourages wolves in the society being on prawl for easy preys, more so when the victims of crime are helpless females. It is the spurt in the number of unmerited acquittals recorded by criminal courts which gives rise to the demand for death sentence to the rapists. The courts have to display a greater sense of responsibility and to be more sensitive while dealing with charges of sexual assault on women. In Bharwada Bhoginbhai Hirijibhai Vs. State of Gujarat 1983 Crl.L.J. 1096 this Court observed that refusal to act on the testimony of a victim of sexual assault in the absence of corroboration as a rule, is adding insult to injury. This court deprecated viewing evidence of such victim with the aid of spectacles fitted with lenses tinted with doubt, disbelief or suspicion. We need only remind ourselves of what this court has said through one of us (Dr. A.S. Anand, J. as His Lordship then was) in State of Punjab Vs. Gurmeet Singh & Ors., 1996 (2) SCC 384. A rapist not only violates the victims privacy and personal integrity, but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process.