High Court acquits rape accused
The trial court had sentenced Sadhu Ram to ten years' imprisonment admitting the evidence against him. He was a milk vendor who supplied milk at the woman's residence every day.
To buttress her case, the woman had argued before the trial court that she was raped by the accused when she was alone at home. She had kept mum for a few days after the incident out of fear for her and her husband's life as the accused had threatened her with dire consequences if she dared to complain.
After the incident, she had shifted to her parental house. She told her parents about the incident after a few days and on their advice lodged a complaint with the local police.
However, Justice S. N. Dhingra acquitted the accused giving him the benefit of doubt. Justice Dhingra accepted Sadhu Ram's plea that he was having an intimate relationship with the woman and the act on that day was consensual.
Photograph as evidence
In support of his case, the accused produced before the Court a photograph in which both the woman and the accused were in an intimate posture.
Though the woman tried to explain her position in the photograph with the argument that it was taken at a marriage ceremony, she failed to prove her family relationship, if any, with the milk vendor.
Her parents also put paid to her case by backtracking from their police statements that their daughter had told them about the incident.
The doctors who examined her also failed to find any bruises on her body or any sign of struggle, the judgment said.
Acquitting the accused on his appeal against the lower court judgment, Justice Dhingra said: “There is every probability that the prosecutrix was having an extramarital relation with the appellant and after discovery of her relationship with appellant, under pressure from her husband, implicated the appellant in a rape case. It seems a case of s*x with consent since the affair between the appellant and the prosecutrix seemed to be going on for quite some time.”
