The Delhi High Court has rejected anticipatory bail of a senior Navy officer, accused of raping a woman on the pretext of marrying her, noting that he was allegedly trying to influence his colleagues to cause destruction of evidence.
Justice Yogesh Khanna also took serious objection to the allegation levelled by the Navy officer against the woman of trying to extort money from him.
“No doubt, the victim is an educated lady, but is an educated person immune to cheating. The answer would be “no”,” the judge remarked.
Marriage prospects
“The facts do show the petitioner [Navy officer] and prosecutrix [woman] did have such relations to kindle a hope in the prosecutrix that the petitioner shall marry her at all costs. It was not illogical for her to think so,” the High Court said.
“Can he be allowed to play with her dignity on the pretext he cohabited with her just for fun and later claim she is extorting money from him. Such allegations if not backed with proof are rather insulting,” Justice Khanna remarked.
Destruction of evidence
The court also took note of Delhi Police’s status report in the case which stated that the officer, being a senior officer of the Indian Navy, was “rather influencing other officers of the (Naval) Academy (Kannur) to manipulate the things causing destruction of evidence”.
The High Court was also of the view that the mobile phone of the officer is also required to be seized “as it allegedly contains nude pictures and videos of the prosecutrix”. It also noted that he has “deleted the electronic record in the form of chats, text messages and Facebook messages/chats exchanged between the parties”.
“This act of the petitioner rather reflects his intention to cover-up his wrongs by erasing the relevant electronic record/data, which would otherwise had given a true picture of the facts,” the judge said.
The woman, in her complaint, alleged that from December 2019 to January 2020 he has been calling her at Kota House, here in the Capital and having physical relations on the promise of marriage.
After January 2020, he went to Kolkata for training with a promise to return after 2-3 months, but did not return.
Subsequently, in March this year, she reached Kannur, Kerala to meet him. She was adjusted by him in the Guest House of Indian Naval Academy, Kerala. When she asked him to marry, he denied saying he did it only for fun.
When the woman threatened to lodge a complaint, he told her he had nude photographs of her and video recordings at Kota House and he shall upload the same on the Internet and shall ruin her career. Later, on June 15, 2021, the woman got to know that the officer had married another girl in Kerala. Following this, she lodged the complaint.
The man, on the other hand, alleged that they were “only friends” and she was obsessed with him and wish to extract money from him.
