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The Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court stated that a woman booking a hotel room with a man does not imply her consent to sexual intercourse.
The Bombay High Court quashed the order of discharge passed by trial court in March 2021 | Image/File
The Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court stated that a woman booking a hotel room and entering it with a man does not imply her consent to sexual intercourse with him.
A single-judge bench led by Justice Bharat P Deshpande dismissed a discharge order passed by the Margao Trial Court in March 2021, by which a rape case against the accused, Gulsher Ahmed, had been closed.
In its discharge order, the trial court had remarked that since the woman was involved in the booking of the hotel room and entered the same with the accused, it implies that she gave her consent for the sexual activity. Therefore, the accused can not be charged with rape, the trial court said in its March 2021 order.
“Drawing such an inference is clearly against the settled proposition and specifically when the complaint was lodged immediately after the incident,” the High Court held in its September 3 judgment which was made public recently.
“Even if it is accepted that the victim went inside the room along with the accused, the same cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered as her consent for sexual intercourse,” the high court added.
All About The Case
The case came to the fore in March 2020 when the accused offered the victim an overseas employment opportunity. The accused had allegedly deceived the woman to come to a hotel room in the guise of meeting with an agency for employment purposes.
Both the accused and the survivor had booked the room together, revealed the complaint copy. The victim alleged that after entering the room, the accused threatened to kill her and then raped her.
She added that when the accused went to the bathroom, she fled the site and exited the hotel. Subsequently, the victim filed a police complaint.
Acting on the complaint, the police arrested the accused and charged him under Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The trial court discharged the accused holding that since the woman had voluntarily gone inside the room, she had consented to sexual intercourse. However, after three years, the Bombay High Court dismissed the discharge order, citing an “error” in the trial court’s judgement.
