Madhya Pradesh High Court allows petitioners to appear for state forest service main exam<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nShashi Kant Sharma, former Additional Director, Prosecution, Haryana, and a practising advocate, said that after the coming into force of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, arising out of the Nirbhaya incident, the number of false cases by women alleging sexual offences and illegal arrests of men had increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section 182 of the IPC explains what happens when false information is given to a public servant. Sharma says: \u201cThis Section prescribes punishment for giving false information with intent to cause public servant to use his lawful power to the injury of another person. Similarly, for malicious prosecution, the victim can avail the remedies under civil and criminal law and for violation of the fundamental rights as envisaged under Article 21 of the Constitution. Civil law remedy may be availed by way of filing a suit for damages. Criminal law deals with prosecuting the wrongdoers for malicious prosecution and perjury. But in the present scenario, this prosecution is still a developing law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July 2020, a teacher in a private school in Karnal alleged gang rape. It involved the proprietor of the school and a revenue officer. No immediate arrests were made. After a few weeks, the woman allegedly settled the issue after Rs 7.5 lakh was given. This money was recovered from her and a case registered. The woman accused the son of a lawmaker to be behind her being framed and trapped. Namrata Gaur, member of the Haryana State Commission for Woman, rubbished the probe in this case and termed it shoddy. The Karnal police came under criticism for its allegedly biased role against the woman accused. A Special Investigating Team of the adjoining Kaithal district is now probing this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shockingly, the Mewat region in Haryana, one of the most backward in the state, has become notorious in this issue as rape and molestation cases are often registered to extort money. A former officer of Mewat revealed that 80 percent of such cases have turn out to be of extortion. This trend is fanned by vested interests called \u201cthondas\u201d (go-betweens), who after getting an FIR filed by a woman, settle the issue between the parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, a TikTok star of Haryana with political ambitions, allegedly slapped a government official on duty for \u201cindecently treating\u201d her. The video of the assault went viral as the complainant played the victim card. Some years back, there was a sudden spurt of rape cases in the state and as the police registered cases, they found many of them to be false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, those women who genuinely suffer sexual assaults often don\u2019t report them due to the stigma attached. Society looks on these women as being of easy virtue. It is an irony that police do not have any interest in tackling such cases because the general perception is that either the case will not succeed or end up being compromised. For this reason, if the allegations of sexual offences are found to be false, the police do not close them. This is the reason that there is no data available on false cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally, if such cases are closed, it is done after a statement from the victim that she was under a false belief of the identity of the person. This way, she is insulated from any legal action. The police too are complacent as they are relieved to be rid of an unnecessary case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haryana has had women police stations in all districts since 2016. The sole aim of starting them was to afford a platform for victims of sexual offences to report crimes without any hesitation and to seek action against the perpetrators. But lately, almost 50 percent of the crimes in other police stations are being allotted to women police stations since the complaints invariably bring some aspect of women victimisation. If there is an issue regarding distribution of property, a case would be made out where the male of the other party would allegedly molest a woman from this side. In marital discord and domestic violence cases, an accusation made with impunity these days is of unnatural sex being perpetrated on the victim to make the case stronger and non-bailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn the recent case where former Union minister MJ Akbar had sued journalist Priya Ramani, the court observed: \u201cThe woman cannot be punished for raising voice against the sex abuse on the pretext of criminal complaint of defamation as the right of reputation cannot be protected at the cost of the right of life and dignity of woman as guaranteed in Indian Constitution under Article 21 and right of equality before law and equal protection of law as guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution. The woman has a right to put her grievance at any platform of her choice and even after decades.\u201d The judgment underscored that a person\u2019s \u201cright of reputation cannot be protected at the cost of right to dignity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another recent case on gender sensitivity which drew criticism was when a Supreme Court judge asked (but later withdrew) whether the rape accused would marry the minor girl. This disturbing lack of gender sensitivity from the top court is, indeed, shocking. Though the Court clarified that it was not forcing the accused to marry the victim, the damage was done. The Court\u2019s comment trivialises sexual violence against women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read Also: Compromise can\u2019t erase offence under POCSO Act, says Madras High Court<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother shocking judgment was in 2020 from the Madhya Pradesh High Court which granted bail to a molestation accused on the condition that he request the victim to tie him a \u201crakhi\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is sad that rape cases too have been compromised and settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014The writer is a retired IPS officer, an advocate and a commentator<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Delhi High Court recently observed that it had become a trend to register false FIRs in sexual offence cases, thereby tarnishing the image of the man. The police too prefers to ignore them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[272],"tags":[102585,1377,102584,93952,102590,102589,102591],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2021\/03\/20141356\/Delhi-High-Court2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}