Two recent judgements in rape cases - one relating to a film producer and the other concerning three students - have thrown judicial propriety and precedents to the wind. The verdicts have shamed the victims, disregarding the Supreme Court's rulings in a number of cases. DH file photo
Two recent judgements in rape cases — one relating to a film producer and the other concerning three students — have thrown judicial propriety and precedents to the wind. The verdicts have shamed the victims, disregarding the Supreme Court’s rulings in a number of cases.
The apex court has time and again asked the courts to be sensitive and responsive to the plight of the victim as rape is the worst form of woman’s oppression and brings in humiliation, feeling of disgust, tremendous embarrassment, sense of shame, trauma and lifelong emotional scar.
In the case lodged by a US researcher against the co-director of Peepli Live, Mahmood Farooqui, the Delhi High Court on September 25 made an elaborate discussion on the “myriad circumstances, surrounding a consent” to acquit him.
‘No means yes’
The court said, “It may not necessarily always mean yes in case of yes or no in case of no.” It looked into the circumstances and past conduct between the accused and the victim to conclude: “An expression of disinclination alone, that also a feeble one, may not be sufficient to constitute rape.”
The single judge bench went on to add, “Instances of a woman’s behaviour are not unknown that a feeble ‘no’ may mean a ‘yes’.”
Similarly, in the case pertaining to the repeated sexual assault of an MBA student of Jindal University, the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s division bench on September 13 suspended the sentence of students and granted them bail till the hearing of the appeal.
The court found that the victim’s testimony offered an “alternate casual relationship with her friends, acquaintances, adventurism and experimentation in sexual encounters.”
Though she claimed that her seniors had obtained her explicit pictures on WhatsApp to exploit her, the court said, “Careful examination of her statement again offers an alternate conclusion of misadventure stemming from a promiscuous attitude and voyeuristic mind.”
The Supreme Court in the State of Uttar Pradesh vs Chhoteylal in 2014 said: “In prosecutions of rape, the law does not require corroboration. The evidence of the prosecutrix may sustain a conviction. It is only by way of abundant caution that court may look for some corroboration....” It also held that a woman who is the victim of sexual assault is not an accomplice to the crime.
Her evidence cannot be tested with suspicion as that of an accomplice. In State of Himachal Pradesh vs Mango Ram, a three-judge bench of the apex court, while dealing with the aspect of “consent” in the offence of rape, said, “Consent for the purpose of Section 375 (rape) requires voluntary participation not only after the exercise of intelligence based on the knowledge of the significance and moral quality of the act but after having fully exercised the choice between resistance (and) assent.”