A Delhi court has acquitted a man in a rape case as the victim said in her evidence that she had lodged the complaint under pressure from her parents because they were against her marriage with the accused.
She deposed that she had recorded her statement before a Metropolitan Magistrate charging the accused with the rape and criminal intimidation under coercion from her parents.
The case was registered at the Baba Hari Das Nagar police station in June, 2014. The victim in her complaint had alleged that accused Sunil Kumar had allured her promising to marry her, kept her in a jhuggi, and raped her for nine days. Thereafter, the accused dumped her at a bus terminal, assuring her that he would come back after taking money from her friend. But when he did not come back, the victim returned to her house, the complaint said. She further alleged that, on the same day at night she got a threat call from the accused’s parents that they would kill her if she reported the matter to the police.
But in her evidence in the trial, the victim told a complete different story, exculpating the accused.
“I know accused Sunil Kumar present in the court today. He is my husband. We got married… at Arya Samaj Mandir… Since then I have been staying with the accused as his wife. I am happy in living with the accused,’’ the victim said in her evidence. “I and the accused had been in love with each other for the last five or six years. Since my parents were against this love affair, I had voluntarily eloped with the accused... We stayed together in a village… There were consensual physical relations between us during that period. When I returned to my house…my parents pressured me and forced me to sign a typed complaint which was then submitted in the police station,’’ she said.
She also moved an application before the Magistrate for a fresh recording of evidence as she had evidenced that her earlier statement was under the duress of her parents. In her second recording of statement, she absolved the accused of all the charges.
“The result… is that the prosecutrix was a consenting party to the sexual intercourse with the accused,’’ Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said while acquitting the accused.