Punish women who file false rape case: Delhi court

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.