An Indian Woman will not concoct false rape story out of hatred, spite, or revenge: Manipur HC

The bench of Justice MV Muralidaran of Manipur High Court while denying anticipatory bail to a rape accused refused to accept the argument that he was falsely implicated in the case.

The judge opined that the stigma that attaches to the victim of rape in Indian society ordinarily rules out the leveling of false accusations. "An Indian woman traditionally will not concoct an untruthful story and bring charges of rape for the purpose of blackmail, hatred, spite or revenge," he stated.

Justice Muralidaran said that "a forcible sexual assault brings in humiliation, feeling of disgust, tremendous embarrassment, sense of shame, trauma and lifelong emotional scar to a victim and it is, therefore, most unlikely of a woman, and more so by a young woman, roping in somebody falsely in the crime of rape".

The present case was registered on the basis of a complaint lodged by the victim girl on October 16, 2022, that two of her Institute teachers took her to a picnic with some other staff, colleagues and students, and on the way back she was given an adulterated cold drink. Thereafter, she found herself in the house of one of her teachers with the accused- the Founder and Managing Director of the institute where she studies, who forcibly raped her twice.

However, it was the case of the accused and other co-accused (the teachers) that they had been falsely implicated in the case, and the victim and the accused were, in fact, in a love relationship.

The accused submitted that he and the victim had decided to marry and therefore they had eloped on the evening of the picnic.

He further claimed that on the next day they returned to his house, and later on, with his elder family members he went to the victim's house to talk about marriage, however, the elder sister of the victim beat her up and victim's family forced her to lodge a false complaint.

On the other hand, before the high court, the victim filed an affidavit opposing the petition for anticipatory bail of the accused persons, stating that she and the accused did not have any relationship and she was raped by him. She further stated that after the incident, the accused's family had tried to convince her to say that the elopement had happened with her consent.

The court held that prima facie the offence was made out against the petitioners qua kidnap, rape and cheating with conspiracy and the prosecution had been able to establish a prima facie case against them.

"This Court does not find anything on the record to satisfy itself, at this stage, that there are grounds or more to say reasonable grounds for granting anticipatory bail to the petitioners," the court further observed.

Accordingly, court dismissed the anticipatory bail applications.

Case Title: Yumnam Surjit Kumar Singh vs The Officer-in-Charge and Anr and Connected matters