Delhi HC frees man serving 30-year term for rape

New Delhi: A man, who was sentenced in 2014 to 30 years imprisonment for raping a woman after confining her in a house for nine months, has been acquitted by the Delhi high court, which said the case was filled with “inconsistencies and improbabilities.”

Justice C Hari Shankar allowed the appeal of the man, Shiva, against the trial court’s 2014 verdict by which he was convicted and awarded 30 years jail term.

The high court said that the man shall be released from jail forthwith unless his incarceration is required in any other case.

According to the prosecution, the woman had alleged that in 2012, while she was travelling in a train and had gone to the washroom, the man had threatened to kill her family. Subsequently, he had covered her mouth with a handkerchief after which she had lost consciousness.

On regaining consciousness, she found herself in a room where the man allegedly used to administer her drugs, beat her, and repeatedly raped her for nine months. The woman had alleged that two of his friends, with their faces covered, had also raped her.

Advocate Pramod Kumar Dubey, representing Shiva, contended that consent was bound to be inferred on the part of the woman, especially as she and the man had cohabited for nine months in the same premises.

The high court, in its judgement, said that there were several questions which remain unanswered, including as to how the man managed to render the woman unconscious by covering her mouth with a handkerchief in a crowded train compartment with no one raising any alarm.

The court said it was admitted by the woman that she had visited a shop with the man to purchase a television set and that it was bought as per her choice. The court further noted that there were several rooms in the house where the man was living as a tenant with people sharing a common toilet and the woman must have visited the washroom several times in nine months.

“It is inherently unbelievable that she would neither inform any of the other tenants in the building about what was transpiring,” it said.