While acquitting a man of the charge of sexually assaulting a woman on the pretext of marrying her, an Additional Sessions Judge has cautioned against blaming courts for letting rape accused off the hook.
In the present case, Additional Sessions Judge Nivedita Anil Sharma acquitted accused Ashwani Jaswal as the victim said in the trial of the case that she had lodged the case at the behest of one of her well-wishers. Not only the FIR, she said she had also recorded her statement before a Metropolitan Magistrate accusing Jaswal of sexually assaulting her at the well-wisher’s instance. She urged the court to acquit Jaswal.
She further said that some misunderstanding had developed between her and Jaswal over some petty issues and she shared it with her well-wisher. Her friend advised her to lodge a case against him. The well-wisher wrote a complaint in Hindi and she just signed it without reading the content, she told the court.
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The woman also withdrew the allegation that the accused cheated her Rs.90 lakh. “…today there is a hue and cry being raised everywhere that courts are not convicting the rape accused. However, no man accused of rape can be convicted if the witnesses do not support the prosecution case or give quality evidence or where the prosecutrix is hostile, as in the present case...” Ms. Sharma observed.
“…the court has to confine itself to the ambit of law and the contents of the file as well as the testimonies of the witnesses and is not to be swayed by emotions or reporting in the media,” she added.