INDORE: The Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court has denied bail to a man accused of ‘rape on the pretext of marriage’, observing that unmarried girls in India “do not indulge in carnal activities for the fun of it”.
“In the considered opinion of this court, barring a few cases, India is a conservative society. It has not yet reached such a level (advance or lower) of civilisation where unmarried girls, regardless of their religion, indulge in carnal activities with boys just for the fun of it, unless it is backed by some future promise, assurance of marriage,” observed the bench of Justice Subodh Abhyankar, adding: “To prove her point, it is not necessary every time for a girl to try to commit suicide as in the present case.”
The complainant had taken poison on June 2 this year, a day after she was allegedly denied marriage. Police took her ‘dying declaration’, but she survived.
The accused faces charges under Sections 376 (rape), 376(2N) (repeated rape of the same woman), 366 (kidnaping or inducing woman to compel marriage) of the Indian Penal Code and various sections of Pocso Act at Mahakal police station in Ujjain. His counsel, Umesh Sharma, submitted before the court that the accused had a two-year affair with the complainant and they had entered into a physical relationship on their free will.
Sharma argued that the complainant is 21 years old and had falsely said, under the pressure of family members, that the incident took place around three years ago. The parents of both the accused and complainant were against marriage because of their religion, so it can’t be said under these circumstances that the accused committed rape, Sharma said.
The government counsel opposed the bail, saying the accused had repeatedly raped the woman since October 2018 on the pretext of marriage, and on June 1 this year refused to marry her because he was getting married to someone else. This led to the suicide attempt, he pointed out.
After hearing both the sides, the high court denied bail to accused and observed that in majority of rape cases, the defence of accused is that the “prosecutrix was a consenting party and in most cases the accused gets benefit of doubt.
“A boy who is entering into a physical relationship with a lass must realise that his actions have consequences and should be ready to face the same as it is the girl who is always at the receiving end, because it is she who runs the risk of being pregnant and also her ignominy in society if her relationship is disclosed,” the high court said.
