Penal provisions for rape are often being misused by women as "weapon for vengeance and vendetta" to harass and blackmail their male friends by filing false cases to extort money and to force them get married, the Delhi High Court has said.
The court said that in many cases woman first agree to have consensual sex but she files a rape case against her boyfriend when the relationship breaks up in order to force him to get married, making not only "mockery" of the marriage but also inflate the statistics of rape cases.
"Many of the cases are being reported by those women who have consensual physical relationship with a man but when the relationship breaks due to one reason or the other, the women use the law as a weapon for vengeance and personal vendetta to extort money and sometimes even to force the boy to get married to her"
"Out of anger and frustration, they tend to convert such consensual sex as an incident of rape, defeating the very purpose of the provision," Justice Kailash Ghambhir said.
It said the court must cautiously examine the intentions of the girl to find out whether the rape complaint is genuine or has malafide motives.
"There is a clear demarcation between rape and consensual sex and in cases where such controversies are involved, the court must very cautiously examine the intentions of both the individuals involved and to check if even the girl on the other hand is genuine or had malafide motives. Cases like these not only make mockery of the sacred institution of marriage but also inflate the statistics of rape cases which further deprecates our own society," the court said.
The court made these observations while granting anticipatory bail to a man, a resident of Rani Bagh.
The court said the woman had a physical relationship with the petitioner for more than 2 and half years and filed the rape case against him after their relation broke up.
"It is not just a single act of sharing physical intimacy but the same continued for almost a long period of three years. There lies a possibility that the petitioner might have then refused to marry the prosecutrix and this refusal on the part of the petitioner gave a serious jolt to the prosecutrix who then with the help of police, solemnized the marriage with him when petitioner was in his casual apparels(track suit).
"It is only on January 30, 2013, that the complainant raised her voice for the first time and made allegations of rape against him," the court said.