A man has been acquitted of the charges of raping a girl by a Delhi court, which said either no such incident took place or it was “consensual”.
Additional sessions judge Kamini Lau acquited Sultanpuri resident Desh Raj of the charges of kidnapping, raping and hurting the 17-year-old girl by giving her poison, saying it does not appear plausible that the accused established physical relations with her at a public place without anybody noticing them.
The court also acquitted Raj’s friend of the charges of abetting the crime.
Giving benefit of doubt to Raj, the judge said that there were contradictions in the testimony of the girl and she was not a “credible and trustworthy” witness and there was no independent witness or medical evidence to support her.
According to police, Raj and the girl were known to each other from the past few years and in August 2011, he took her to an open cabin on the third floor of a sweets shop in Sultanpuri area and allegedly raped her after giving her a cold drink laced with sedatives.
The girl had become unconscious after consuming the drink and when she regained consciousness, she came to know that she was raped by Raj, the police said.
The girl had told police that Raj had promised to marry her due to which she had not told her parents about the incident. But later on, when he refused to marry her, she told her parents and police about it and a case was registered against the accused.
The court, in its order, said the girl was regularly going out with the accused but she did not inform about the incident to her friends or teachers.
“The entire case of prosecution from the very inception had been that the accused had been promising the prosecutrix to marry her but did not keep his promise.
“Further, despite the fact that the prosecutrix had been regularly going with the accused, she admits that she had not informed about the incident to any of her classmates or teachers in the school, which indicates that either no such incident had taken place or if it had taken place, it was consensual,” it said.
During the trial, Raj claimed that he was falsely implicated in the case and he neither took the girl to any room nor raped her.