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Journalism of Courage
Karnataka High Court rape case: The Karnataka High Court has held that a relationship, which started mutually and ended in “disappointment” cannot be converted into a criminal offence as it quashed an FIR against a man facing rape charges.
Justice M Nagaprasanna was deciding the man’s plea seeking quashing of FIR against him.
“A relationship born of mutual volition, even if it founders in disappointment, cannot, save in clearest of cases, be transmuted into an offence under the criminal law,” the judge said on October 25.
The court further said that allowing the trial of the case would lead to a “ritualistic procession towards miscarriage of justice”.
“If the present prosecution were permitted to meander into a trial, it would be nothing but a ritualistic procession towards miscarriage of justice and indeed become an abuse of the process of the law,” the court held.
It came on record that a man and a woman met via a dating app and later had conversations on other social media platforms, and decided to meet each other at a restaurant. They were stated to have had established intimate relations at a hotel subsequently.
The woman, however, alleged she was raped by the man.
An FIR was registered against the man under Section 64 (punishment for rape) of the BNS. The accused challenged the FIR in the high court.
The court noted that the investigating officer had deliberately ignored the chats between the accused and the complainant that they had on social media.
The court observed that the chats indicated that the acts between them were consensual.
The court referred to a Supreme Court judgment that explained the distinction between rape and consensual sex.
The high court quoted the apex court verdict, which says, “If the accused has not made the promise with the sole intention to seduce the prosecutrix to indulge in sexual acts, such an act would not amount to rape.”
The verdict adds, “There may be a case where the prosecutrix agrees to have sexual intercourse on account of her love and passion for the accused and not solely on account of the misconception created by accused, or where an accused, on account of circumstances which he could not have foreseen or which were beyond his control, was unable to marry her despite having every intention to do. Such cases must be treated differently.”
After citing the rulings in such cases, the high court allowed the man’s plea and quashed the FIR and the proceedings arising out of it.
