A sweeper and a contractor running a toilet complex have been acquitted by a Delhi court of the charge of raping a woman worker of the civic body on grounds of four months delay in lodging the case by the victim and unreliability of her deposition.
A Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) sweeper and a contractor running a toilet complex have been acquitted by a Delhi court of the charge of raping a woman worker of the civic body on grounds of four months delay in lodging the case by the victim and unreliability of her deposition.
"I do not find testimony of the victim of immaculate quality. It seems artificial and the story unfolded by her is unreliable and improbable," additional sessions judge Manoj Jain said adding "it is not safe to convict the accused persons merely on uncorroborated and non-natural version of the woman."
"There is also a mystifying delay in lodging the FIR," the court added.
The case of rape was registered by Rohini police on the statement of a MCD sweeper, working in Metro Vihar area, that she had been raped by another sweeper Rohtas and one Kuldeep, the toilet complex contractor, inside the complex.
She said on the day of the incident, the duo had asked her to come to the toilet complex at Metro Vihar in the evening as some senior officer was to visit it.
She alleged that when she reached there and entered the complex to take her broom, the duo raped her.
The woman said she was raped on February 14, 2010, and the FIR in the case was registered on July 1.
The woman explained the delay in registration of the FIR by saying she had informed her husband soon after the rape and subsequently went to the police to lodge the case the next day. But the police had allegedly refused to register the case as some MCD officials intervened in the matter and made her arrive at a compromise with the two men.
She alleged she was later sacked from the MCD.
The court let off the accused, taking note of various inconsistencies in her statemnet. As per the alleged victim, she had been raped in a room of a public toilet complex where the caretaker of the complex too lived with his family.
"It would be hardly believable that the accused would dare to commit rape in such a room," ASJ Jain said.
The court said the conduct of the woman was not acceptable as she had deposed that after commission of the alleged crime, she accompanied the accused on his bike who dropped him near her house.
"In such a situation, if at all she had been wronged, she would have raised an alarm. Instead, she ventured out on a joy-ride merrily sitting on the pillion seat and travelling some distance with the person who had allegedly ravished her forcibly minutes earlier," ASJ Jain said.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}