MUMBAI, Dec. 10 -- The Bombay High Court last week upheld the 14-year jail term given to a 30-year-old man for sexually exploiting eight minor girls, some as young as 10 and 11, at an orphanage run by his father in Chambharli village, Raigad. The court, however, cleared his brother of all the charges against him and allowed their 51-year-old mother to be released based on the time she had already spent in custody after her arrest in June 2015. The case began in 2015 when advocate Manisha Tulpule, then president of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in Raigad, was informed by a teacher that girls at a nearby orphanage were being sexually abused. A CWC officer then visited the orphanage and found that it was being run without the required permissions. The CWC immediately took all the children into its custody. After being moved out of the orphanage, several girls reported that they had been abused by the owner's sons. The police then filed a case against the two brothers and their mother at the Rasayani police station in early May 2015 under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. On March 3, 2020, a Panvel court found all three guilty. One of the brothers was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for repeatedly raping and physically abusing several minor girls. His brother was sentenced to 10 years for offences under the POCSO Act. Their mother received a one-year sentence for not reporting the abuse to the police even though the girls had approached her. All three then appealed to the high court claiming the allegations against them were false. On Friday, Justice RM Joshi rejected the brothers' appeal after finding that the girl's descriptions of the abuse were strong enough to prove his guilt. However, the high court found contradictions in the accusations against his brother and acquitted him due to unreliable evidence. The court also released their mother saying that her two-and-a-half months in jail after her arrest was enough, given that she is 51 and has no criminal history....