Mumbai: Breach of every promise of marriage is not a false promise, Mumbai sessions court said while acquitting a 33-year-old man booked for raping his girlfriend under the false promise of marriage. The woman, however, died while giving birth due to excessive blood loss, even before the trial could begin.
Additional sessions judge Sanjashree Gharat observed, “It is alleged that she was residing separately. There is nothing on record that the complainant’s marriage was dissolved by the Decree of Divorce. Therefore, the question of the promise of marriage does not arise. Even if the accused was ready to marry the complainant, she was not competent to get married during the subsistence of her previous marriage.”
The court also noted that the DNA profiling of the woman’s stillborn fetus did not match with the accused.
The woman had alleged that she had separated from her husband 11 years prior to the registration of the case in September 2014. The woman had also claimed that the accused used to stalk her since 2012 but she ignored him.
She said that in September 2014, the victim had gone to purchase vegetables at the Hingwala market, where the accused gagged her mouth and took her to a remote area, and raped her. The woman claimed that the accused raped her twice.
The woman alleged that when she informed the accused that she was pregnant, he promised to marry her soon. The woman claimed that in April 2015 when her mother confronted her about the pregnancy, she disclosed all the facts to her parents, and the case of rape was registered against the accused. The woman was eight months pregnant at the time of registering the FIR.
The woman delivered a stillborn child and she also died due to excessive loss of blood during the delivery. The police during the investigation collected blood samples of the accused, the sternum of the woman, and the femur bone of the baby and forwarded those for DNA analysis. The DNA of the child did not match that of the accused.
“There is inordinate delay in filing FIR. The complainant did not disclose the incident even after knowledge of her pregnancy. She suppressed her pregnancy till it was revealed to her family members. Therefore, the possibility of a consensual relationship cannot be ruled out,” the court said, acquitting the accused.
