New Delhi, Jan 28
Describing a sexual assault
case as the perfect illustration of gross misuse of the rape laws, a
Delhi court Wednesday said the women filing false complaints should be
punished.
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat's remarks came
in a case in which a woman filed a false rape case against a Delhi-based
businessman at the behest of someone who wanted to settle scores with
him.
Directing police to lodge a complaint for registering a
false rape case, Justice Bhat defined the case as "a classic example of
how men are being falsely implicated in rape cases to settle personal
scores with them".
"This is a perfect illustration of total misuse of rape laws," the judge said.
Observing
that the accused even after his acquittal has to live with the trauma
of having been a rape accused throughout his life, the judge said: "Time
has come when the courts should deal firmly with the women filing false
complaints of rape."
"These women, who turn out to be tormentors
and not the victims, should be punished under the appropriate
provisions of law," the court said.
"It is these false rape cases
which make the crime graph shoot up, thus playing havoc with the actual
crime statistics. These also tend to trivialise the offence of rape,"
the court said.
"No doubt, act of rape causes intense emotional
distress and immense humiliation to the victim but at the same time one
cannot lose sight of the fact that false implication in a rape case
causes equal humiliation, disgrace and mental agony to the accused."
The court, while acquitting accused, said that forensic reports also trash the prosecution case.
"The
conduct of the prosecutrix (victim) in mentioning a fictitious name as
well as fictitious address in the first information report (FIR) and
disappearing soon after the registration of the FIR, and keeping her
both mobile phones switched off, strongly indicates that she has lodged a
false FIR against the accused at the behest of somebody else who wanted
to settle the scores with the accused," the court said in its order
delivered last week.
The woman had lodged a complaint with the
police that on Sep 5, 2011, the businessman had raped her at gun-point
in west Delhi's Jai Vihar area.
She claimed that on the pretext
of getting her a job, he asked to meet her in the evening near Dwarka
More Metro Station from where he took her to a secluded place and raped
her.
After lodging the complaint with the police, the woman,
however, went missing, and switched off her cellphones. Her whereabouts
could not be traced for one-and-half years.
The accused businessman, who was then arrested, had maintained during the trial that he was being falsely implicated.
