The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted a man accused of raping a married woman on the pretext of marriage, saying she was mature enough to understand the consequences of her actions.
A bench of justices C T Ravikumar and Rajesh Bindal also noted that there were discrepancies in the FIR and the statement of the complainant recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, appearing for the accused, Vinod Gupta, submitted that the FIR is nothing but an abuse of the process of law as the physical relations between the two were consensual.
The complainant is a married woman having a 15-year-old daughter and living with her parents. There could not be any question of promise of marriage made to her by the appellant, he said.
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The top court said, "It is not a case where the complainant was of an immature age who could not foresee her welfare and take the right decision. She was a grown lady, about 10 years elder to the appellant."
"She was mature and intelligent enough to understand the consequences of the moral and immoral acts for which she consented during subsistence of her earlier marriage. In fact, it was a case of betraying her husband," the bench said while quashing the FIR.
According to the FIR, the woman stated that she was managing her clothing shop. She and her husband started living separately following a dispute.
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On December 10, 2018, the woman got a divorce from her husband.
In 2017, Gupta approached the woman to take the first floor of her house on rent and the two gradually developed physical relations.
As the woman was not living with her husband, Gupta proposed to marry her if she got a divorce, the FIR stated.
When she insisted on getting married after her divorce, Gupta told the woman that his family was not agreeing and finally refused to marry her on December 11, 2020, it said.
Later, the woman lodged a complaint against him.
