BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court has quashed the rape charges against a police inspector on the grounds that a consensual sexual relationship cannot be termed as rape. However, the court refused to quash the charges of assault, criminal intimidation and attempted murder registered against the inspector, saying that a consensual sexual relationship can never become a licence for the man to assault the woman.
Justice M Nagaprasanna made these observations while partly allowing the petition filed by inspector B Ashok Kumar from Sagar of Shivamogga district, questioning the crime registered by the victim, a social activist and wife of a police constable working at a different police station, and the charge sheet filed against him.
The court said the offence of rape alleged against the petitioner as obtained under Section 376(2)(n) of the IPC cannot be maintained as consensual acts between the two cannot become a rape. The other offences are all to be sustained as any amount of consensus cannot hand a man the licence to assault a woman. Therefore, all the offences charged against him, other than the one of repeated rape, are sustained and the petitioner has to face trial, the court added.
The petitioner, when he was a Circle Inspector, came in contact with the complainant in 2017 and formed an intimate relationship. In May 2021, she filed a complaint against him at the Women’s Police station alleging physical and sexual harassment, after which the inspector allegedly threatened her to withdraw the case or he would kill her children. Another complaint was registered by her in September 2021 alleging offences punishable under Sections 504 and 506 of the IPC. However, she did not pursue these two cases and filed a memo before the court.
On November 11, 2021, she was picked up at 7.30 pm by the petitioner, driven to a hotel where he forcibly had sex with her, assaulted her badly and dropped her at the bus stop at Sagar at 2.45 am. The complainant got treatment for the injuries and registered the crime. This was investigated and a charge sheet was filed. Hence the petitioner moved the high court.