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The Delhi High Court on Thursday refused to grant bail to a man accused of raping a law student when she was a minor. The court noted that the prosecutrix and the accused were married to each other.
The high court said that marrying the prosecutrix doesn't absolve the accused of the offence of repeatedly raping a minor. " Clearly, the marriage was performed by the accused simply as a ploy to get himself bailed out, having committed repeated rapes of a minor girl, as alleged by her in the FIR, and statement under Section 164 CrPC," Justice Girish Kathpalia said. The High Court questioned the statment given by her to get the accsued out of custody. She had stated that she was unaware of FIR's content as the complaint was drafted by her lawyer. The high court said that it cannot be believed that despite being a law student, she was not aware of the content of the FIR, particularly when the complaint was transferred from English to Hindi. Justice Girish Kathpalia rejected the bail of the accused after noting the conduct of accsued and the prosecutrix. " Considering the above circumstances, I do not find it a fit case to release the accused/applicant on bail. The bail application is dismissed," Justice Kathpalia ordered on April 9. The accused was arrested in 2024 after registration of the FIR at the Jamia Nagar Police station in 2024. It was alleged that the prosecutrix met the accused on Facebook and became friends. Accsued had sexual relations with her on the pretext of marriage, and he got the abortion done of prosecutrix twice. Though when she became a majority, he refused to marry her. After registration of FIR, the arrested accused got married to her in February 2026. " Of course, as per documents on record, on 12.02.2026, the accused got married to the prosecutrix through Nikahnama. But that does not absolve the accused of his repeated acts of rape when the prosecutrix was a minor in age," the High court said. The high court observed, " At the time of commencement of sexual relations between the accused and the prosecutrix, the latter was aged only 16 years and when she attained the age. of majority in the year 2024, the accused refused to get married to her, which led to the present FIR. " It is only after the accused was arrested and was in jail that he agreed to get married with her, so by way of order dated 02.02.2026 of this Court, his interim bail application was disposed of directing that he be taken in custody before the Qazi, who performed the marriage ceremony," the bench noted. Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) Sanjeev Sabharwal strongly opposed the bail application, disclosing that the prosecutrix is not an illiterate person but is a student of law, so it cannot be believed that she was not aware of the contents of her complaint. It was also submitted by the learned APP for the State that this is a fit case in which the police needs to take action against the prosecutrix in view of her testimony before the trial court. APP Sabharwal also submitted that granting bail in such cases would encourage such lawlessness with impunity. The counsel for accsued submitted that subsequent to registration of the case, the accused/applicant got married to the prosecutrix, so it is a fit case to release him on bail. It was also submitted that the prosecutrix never had any grievance with the accused and that she was not even aware of the contents of her complaint, because the same was drafted by her counsel in the Saket Courts. (ANI)
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