Nagpur, July 9
The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court has dismissed an FIR, a chargesheet and a pending case in a rape case, citing various legal issues. Justice duo Vinay Deshpande and Amit Borkar gave the verdict. The accused and the plaintiff had reached an out of court settlement and filed an application in the High Court.
Raju from Mansar and Juhi (fictional names) from Nagpur fell in love with each other. They had decided to get married. Meanwhile, they consensually established frequent physical relations. A few months later, Juhi insisted on getting married, but Raju had not intentions to get married and he started to avoid Juhi and refused to marry. Therefore, Juhi lodged a rape complaint against Raju at Ramtek police station on February 17, 2021. She alleged that Raju raped her on pretext of marriage.
An FIR was registered against Raju. Also, after completing the investigation of the case, the police had filed a chargesheet against Raju in the court on April 22, 2021. While the case was pending, Raju agreed to marry Juhi. Juhi also compromised. They then filed a joint petition in the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR, chargesheet and pending case. which was approved.
Lack of necessary evidence
The High Court passed the order on the grounds that it lacked the evidence required to prove rape. In giving this decision, the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of ‘Narinder Singh and others’ was taken into consideration. The prosecution did not present any concrete evidence on record that Raju did not intend to marry Juhi from the very beginning of their relationship. The decision made it clear that breaking a marriage vow alone does not prove rape.