Supreme Court quashes rape FIR, finds complainant’s intent ‘manipulative’ | India News
NEW DELHI: Supreme Court has quashed rape charges against a man who had a consensual physical relationship with a 30-year-old woman but later backed out of marrying her after observing her “aggressive sexual behaviour, obsessive nature, and manipulative & vindictive tendencies.“Allowing the man’s plea to quash FIRs lodged by Cyberabad police in 2022 on the woman’s complaints of rape on the pretext of marriage, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said, “The facts on record clearly establish the vindictive and manipulative tendencies of the complainant and these aspects have a great bearing on the controversy.”Writing the judgment, Justice Mehta said allowing the man’s prosecution would amount to a gross abuse of legal process. He noted that the complaints were “nothing but a bundle of lies full of fabricated and malicious unsubstantiated allegations levelled by the complainant (woman).”SC was also informed that the woman had filed a similar complaint in 2021 against a professor at Osmania University, where she was studying.What proved crucial in the current case were the woman’s social media chats, where she went by the name ‘Muffin’. These chats revealed her intent and pattern. She admitted to being manipulative and expressed a desire to “get a green card holder.”“At one point, she stated it would not be difficult for her to trap the next one. In the same breath, she mentioned she would not waste time with accused appellant and needed to ‘invest on the next victim’. She also said she would irritate her victims to the extent that they dump her, so she could happily start with the next one,” the bench noted.The court said the chats revealed a consistent pattern that supported the man’s claim of being falsely implicated, and quashed the criminal proceedings against him.
