Court acquits man of charge of raping domestic help

A man has been acquitted by a Delhi court of charges of repeatedly raping and criminally intimidating his 18-year-old domestic help, who had become pregnant, as the girl turned hostile and denied having been raped.
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat acquitted the Uttam Nagar resident saying the girl deposed totally contrary to the prosecution case and it was beyond any shadow of doubt that the man had never sexually assaulted her.
"The girl was declared hostile by the prosecutor.... She denied the suggestion that the man had committed rape upon her on several occasions and that due to the acts of rape, she had become pregnant.

"She also denied that the man had administered pills to her to terminate the pregnancy," the court said.
It also noted that the girl deposed that she had earlier given "false statements" to the police and the magistrate as she was in a "disturbed state of mind".
"Hence it is seen that the girl has deposed totally contrary to the prosecution case. Noting inculpatory against the accused has come in her testimony.

"It is, therefore, beyond any shadow of doubt that the accused had never committed any sexual assault upon the girl," the court said.
The girl had told the police that she had come to Delhi from West Bengal in search of work and she was employed as a maid in the man's house through a placement agency.

She worked in the man's Vikaspuri house for about one year and thereafter he shifted to Uttam Nagar where he raped her for an year due to which she became pregnant, she had alleged, adding that the man had administered her pills to terminate her pregnancy.
Police said the girl informed the placement agency owner's wife about it and she was then employed in some other house from where she ran away after a few days.
It added that when she was brought to Bindapur Police Station here by someone, she had told the officials that she wanted to marry the man.

The girl, however, changed her statement before the court saying the man and his family members used to treat her like their child and she never faced any harassment in their house.
The man did not sexually assault her at any point of time and it was wrongly mentioned in the FIR that she was raped by him and he had given her pills to avoid pregnancy, she told the court, adding that she only wanted that the man should find a suitable match for her and solemnise her marriage.