Man acquitted of raping married woman

A Delhi court has acquitted a man of raping a married woman after ruling that the complainant had entered into a "physical relationship" with the defendant seeking "comfort and companionship of a male as her husband was suffering from depression and undergoing treatment".
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat let off the man, who used to deliver milk to the woman's residence, after the prosecution failed to prove the charges against him.
"She (the complainant) knew and understood the nature and ramifications of her relations with the accused... (But) she continued to have physical relations with him for more than six months.

"At no point did the woman complain either to her husband or her children or to anybody else about the acts of the accused. Probably, she needed comfort and companionship of a male person as her husband was suffering from depression and undergoing treatment at AIIMS," the court said.
"It was a consensual affair between the two and the accused does not appear to have practised any fraud or deceit upon her in obtaining her consent for sexual intercourse," the court ruled.
The man was arrested in May, 2012, following a complaint by the 42-year-old woman alleging that she was raped by him in September, 2011, after she failed to repay money she had taken in loan from him.

However, the court observed that when the accused used to deliver milk at her residence here, "she developed friendship and then intimacy with him, which later on went to the extent of sexual relations between the two".