Court acquits 4, criticises rape law misuse

A city court acquitted four members of a family of gangrape charges, terming it a classic illustration of misuse of rape laws in which the husband of alleged victim used her as a “pawn” to settle personal scores. The court acquitted city residents Sikander, his brother Shailender and their parents Harender Mehto and Sushila of the charges and stressed the need to remain “vigilant” in “differentiating” between false and genuine rape cases so that no innocent person is convicted. Additional sessions judge Virender Bhat said, “Before parting with, I would like to put on record that this case is the classic illustration of misuse of the rape related laws. The husband of the prosecutrix, in order to settle scores with the accused, used her as an arrow or pawn and slapped an utterly false criminal case upon the accused,”. “It is becoming a very difficult job, now-a-days, for the courts to differentiate the genuine rape cases from the false ones,” the judge said. The family was facing trial in the case on the allegations levelled against them by a woman, one of their relatives, who had claimed that she was confined and gangraped by the two brothers and the accused tried to sell her. The woman had approached a magisterial court seeking lodging of an FIR against the accused alleging that Sikander had come to her matrimonial home on August 18, 2011. The court, while acquitting all the accused, said that the complainant and her father had “turned hostile” and the woman had taken a “complete U-turn and has stated the facts which are in total contradiction to the case of prosecution.”