NEW DELHI, Apr 10:
The government must frame a comprehensive policy for rehabilitation of persons accused and jailed on false rape charges, a fast track court has held while acquitting a man in a kidnap-cum-rape case.
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat, while acquitting Haryana-resident Subhash of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a seventh grader, asked Secretaries of the Home and Law Ministries and the Chairman of Law Commission of India to consider his suggestion.
“The court feels that there is immense need for a rehabilitation policy for such people who had faced incarceration in jail and trial in court on false charges of rape,” the ASJ said.
“The government must frame a comprehensive policy for rehabilitation of such persons so that the future of a responsible and law abiding person, who has been jailed on the false rape charges, is secured and he does not face difficulties in settling down in life, after his acquittal,” the court said.
“It is the duty of the government to suitably compensate these persons in order to prevent them from taking to criminal activities,” the ASJ said.
The court made the observations while acquitting Subhash who was accused of kidnapping the girl in March 2007 from outside her school and forcibly taking her to various places along with his two friends and repeatedly raping her.
Police rescued the victim was rescued from a house in Bikaner, Rajasthan and arrested the accused there.
Subhash, however, told the court that it was the girl who had pressurised him for marriage and she had threatened to commit suicide if he would not marry her.
He denied that he had raped the girl and added that she had accompanied him to Jaipur on her own volition as they were in love since January, 2007.
The court concluded that the girl had accompanied Subhash on her own will as she did not raise any alarm despite many opportunities to do so.
Her statements to the police, the magistrate and her deposition in the court also did not support the prosecution case, it said. The medical examination and FSL report also confirmed that the girl was not subjected to rape.
The judge also held that as per the school records the girl was not a minor, thereby ruling out the offence of kidnapping.
“It appears from the evidence on record that the girl had willingly eloped with the accused, stayed with him at Jaipur and Bikaner, but there had been no physical contact between them during this period. The girl has deposed falsely at the instance and under the pressure of her father.
“Her father felt his ego hurt on learning that his daughter has eloped with the accused and as an act of revengeful retribution, got the accused framed in this false case,” the court said.
While acquitting Subhash, the ASJ said, “Good times can not be brought back to him. He has to start the life again from a scratch. This court wishes all the best to him for his future life.”
In its order, the court said the legal principle that a man can be convicted for rape on basis of sole testimony of the victim has become an easy weapon now-a-days to get any person implicated in case of rape and contribute to steep rise in number of such cases being reported in newspapers thereby causing alarm in the society.
“Acquittal of the accused in such case provides some relief to him and vindicates his stand of being innocent. Yet he has live the rest of his life with the stigma of being a rape accused and having spent a long period in jail for same. His dreams are shattered and it becomes difficult for him to live a normal life even after his acquittal,” the ASJ said. (PTI)
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