The Supreme Court on Wednesday made several important comments while acquitting a rape accused.
The court clearly said that a consensual relationship does not fall within the scope of rape. Moreover, the woman was aware of the consequences of the relationship before entering into it.
With this, the apex court on Wednesday acquitted the accused of raping a married woman after promising her marriage.
The court said that the woman was mature enough to understand the consequences of her actions. Justice C.T. A bench of Justices Ravikumar and Rajesh Bindal also said that there were discrepancies in the FIR registered under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the statement of the complainant.
Advocate Ashwini Kumar Dubey, appearing for accused Vinod Gupta, said that the FIR is nothing but an abuse of the process of law as the physical relationship between the two was consensual.
The complainant is a married woman who has a 15 year old daughter and lives with her parents. He said, no question arises of the promise of marriage made by the appellant to her.
Quashing the FIR, the apex court said “the woman was mature and sensible enough to understand the consequences of the moral and immoral acts to which she had consented during her previous marriage.
“It was actually a case of her cheating on her husband.” According to the FIR, the woman told that she used to manage her clothes shop. After the dispute, she and her husband started living separately.
On December 10, 2018, the woman got divorce from her husband. In 2017, Gupta approached the woman to rent the first floor of her house and the two gradually developed a physical relationship.
The FIR states that since the woman was not living with her husband, Gupta proposed to marry her after getting a divorce.
When the woman approached Gupta about getting married after the divorce, Gupta told the woman that his family did not agree and ultimately refused to marry her on December 11, 2020.