Acquitted of raping US national: Lack of consent not communicated to Mahmood Farooqui, says Delhi HC

The judge then said that in the present case, “the appellant (Farooqui) has not been communicated, or at least it is not known that there was no consent…” Saying that it was not required to go into the issue of the timing of occurrences, Justice Ashutosh Kumar said issues like the time of the woman’s arrival, booking a cab and timing of texting “paled into insignificance” when it was doubtful that Farooqui had the “requisite mental intent” of raping her, or “whether he had genuinely mistaken some verbal/non-verbal communication as consent and whether the element of fear in the mind of the prosecutrix (the woman) was made known or communicated…”

Disagreeing with the submission of the woman’s counsel, Vrinda Grover, that Farooqui, before the trial court, did not argue that the act was consensual, the judge said, “… if it appears that some circumstance could be gleaned from such already collected evidence, which enures to the accused’s benefit, the same cannot be brushed aside on the slender ground that such plea was not taken before the trial court”.

The judge also refused to consider the alleged mental condition of Farooqui. Justice Ashutosh Kumar said, “Since no evidence has been led on this aspect, any foray into this field would only be fraught with speculative imagination, which the court does not intend to undertake.”