Three men acquitted of rape charges after victim recants

A Delhi court acquitted three men facing charges of abducting and gang-raping a woman after the victim denied that the accused raped her.

Additional Sessions Judge T.R. Naval acquitted Nazeemuddin, Deepak Aggarwal and Idris Malik of the rape charges, saying that the victim failed to support the prosecution case.

It added that she had specifically denied that these accused took turns to rape her after abducting her.

The judge said: "I come to the conclusion that prosecution has failed to prove its case against accused people beyond any reasonable suspicion and shadow of doubt. The reasons which support my conclusion are firstly that prosecutrix has failed to support the prosecution case."

As per the prosecution, the woman was found lying unconscious on a road in Kailash Nagar area of east Delhi in December 2011 and taken to hospital by police.

According to the prosecution, when the woman regained consciousness, she told the police that Nazeemuddin had come to her house and asked her to resolve her issues with Deepak, with whom she had developed an intimate relationship.

However, when she came to know that Deepak was already married and had a child, she stopped meeting him, police said adding that Nazeemuddin took her to Kailash Nagar where Idrish and Azhar were waiting for them in a car.

It added that the accused asked her to sit in the car and they made her consume a cold drink after which she felt giddy and they took turns to rape her.

However, the victim had changed her stand in the court and said that police officials had taken her signatures on blank papers when she was admitted in hospital. She added that she had given a wrong statement before the magistrate under the threat of the police who, she said, had tutored her.

In the court, she stated that none of the accused present there had ever committed any wrong act with her following which the judge declared her a hostile witness.