NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday acquitted Mahmood Farooqui, co-director of Bollywood film ‘Peepli Live’, in a rape case involving a US researcher, saying he was entitled to benefit of doubt as the testimony of the victim was not reliable.
Pointing out that ‘no’ may not always mean a ‘no’ in acts of passion, Justice Ashutosh Kumar in the detailed ruling explained as to how the woman failed to communicate her denial of consent and why Farooqui might not have been conveyed her denial if there was any.
The court set aside a trial court’s judgment that awarded him a seven-year jail term after he was found guilty of forcing oral sex upon a research scholar from Columbia University at his South Delhi flat on March 28, 2015.
During arguments, Farooqui’s lawyer had denied the allegation of rape levelled by the woman and said: “No such incident took place on that day”.
His counsel had referred to messages exchanged between his client and the woman before the case was lodged and contended that the two were in a “relationship” since January 2015.
“It remains in doubt as to whether such an incident, as has been narrated by the victim took place and if at all it had taken place, it was without the consent/will of the prosecutrix and if it was without the consent of the prosecutrix, whether the appellant could discern/understand the same,” the bench noted in its 82 page order.
“When parties are known to each other, are persons of letters, and are intellectually/academically proficient, and if, in the past, there have been physical contacts. In such cases, it would be really difficult to decipher whether little or no resistance and a feeble ‘no’, was actually a denial of consent,” the judge said while noting that Farooqui had been suffering from Bipolar Disorder.
“If it appears that some circumstance could be gleaned from such already collected evidence, which ensures to the benefit of the accused, the same cannot be brushed aside on the slender ground that such plea was not taken before the trial court,” the bench said.
“At what point of time and for which particular move, the appellant did not have the consent of the prosecutrix is not known. What is the truth of the matter is known to only two persons namely the appellant and the prosecutrix who have advanced their own theories/versions,” the order noted.
The victim, who had come to India in June 2014, was introduced to the director for her research in Hindi Literature. After the incident occurred, the victim returned to the US, but came back two months later to lodge an FIR on June 19, 2015.