65-yr-old acquitted of rape charge after 8 years for lack of evidence

MUMBAI: Eight years after an elderly Govandi resident was arrested for allegedly raping his young daughter-in-law, the Bombay high court has acquitted him citing lack of evidence.
A division bench of Justice P V Hardas and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai said that the victim’s statement could not be relied upon as despite opportunities she had delayed complaining to anyone about the incident and there was no corroborative evidence to back her claims.
The HC ordered that the accused, Shrimant Dudhal, who is now 65 years old, be released from the Nashik prison where he is serving life imprisonment. “In the light of the unnatural behaviour of the victim, it is wholly unsafe to place implicit reliance on (her statement) and in the absence of any other corroborative evidence Dudhal, in our opinion, is entitled to be given the benefit of doubt,” said the judges.
According to the complaint of the victim, the incident happened in April 2006 when her husband, mother-in-law and other relatives had gone to visit a fair. Her father-in-law, who had insisted that his son go for the fair, then allegedly raped her for three days. On the third day, finding that the room was not locked, she escaped and told her neighbours. They took her to the police station and Dudhal was arrested. A trial court in 2009 convicted Dudhal and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The 21-year-old victim, who had left the house after the incident divorced her husband and married a second time.
The high court while hearing Dudhal’s appeal recently found many inconsistencies in the victim’s statement. “The claim of the victim that she was confined in the room for three days, appears to be a figment of the imagination of the victim,” said the judges, who pointed out that the victim in her statement had not said that her father-in-law had bolted the door from outside when he went out of the house during that period. The court further said that the victim had also stated that during the three days she used the common toilet located outside the house but had not disclosed the incident to anyone.
“The conduct... is extremely unnatural. Though opportunity was available to the victim, yet no efforts were made by her for disclosing the incident to anyone,” said the judges. They observed that her sister-in-law’s children were in the house at the time of the incident and there was no medical or other evidence to corroborate the
complaint.
“(The lawyers for the accused) have rightly urged before us that in the light of the wholly unnatural conduct of the victim and the fact that the medical evidence does not corroborate the testimony of the victim, (it) ought to have been disbelieved and Dudhal ought to have been acquitted,” the HC ruled.