Bombay High Court slams attempt to shame gangrape survivor using her morality

India Today

08-05-2025

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court strongly criticised the attempts of defence lawyers to question the morality of a gangrape survivor. The court reminded the defence that 'even then, a person cannot force a woman to have intercourse with him without her consent.'Justices Nitin B Suryawanshi and MW Chandwani made the remarks while hearing appeals filed by four men convicted of gangraping a woman in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district in 2014, alongside a juvenile.advertisementThe survivor had been estranged from her husband and was living with another man. She had previously been in a relationship with one of the accused. However, the court said such facts could not be used to undermine her testimony or justify the crime.
'We feel it appropriate to state that rape in its simplest term is 'ravishment of a woman without her consent by force, fear or fraud',' the bench said. 'Sexual violence diminishes law and thus, unlawfully encroaches on the privacy of a woman. Rape cannot be treated only as a sexual crime but it should be viewed as a crime involving aggression which leads to the domination of the prosecutrix. It is a violation of her right of privacy.'Calling rape 'the most morally and physically reprehensible crime in society,' the court added: 'It is an assault on the body, mind and privacy of the victim. Rape objectifies a woman and thereby shakes the very core of her life. Sexual intercourse on one hand gives pleasure to the participants including a woman, but if it is done without consent of the woman, it is an assault on her body, mind and privacy.'advertisementReaffirming the principle of consent, the judges said: 'A woman who says 'NO' means 'NO'. There exists no further ambiguity and there could be no presumption of consent based on a woman's so-called 'immoral activities'.'According to the court, even if there was a past relationship between the prosecutrix and the accused, if she did not consent to sexual intercourse with him, his associate (another accused) or the juvenile 'any act without her consent would be an offence within the meaning of Section 375 (rape) of the IPC.'The bench stressed that any past relationship between the woman and the accused did not imply ongoing consent. 'A woman who consents to sexual activities with a man at a particular instance does not ipso facto give consent to sexual activity with the same man at all other instances,' the court held. 'A woman's character or morals are not related to the number of sexual partners she has had The intimacy, if any, will not absolve the accused — at the most, this will be relevant while considering the punishment.'According to the prosecution, the gangrape survivor, who was a Muslim, had entered a live-in relationship with a Hindu man after separating from her husband. Two of the Muslim accused, disapproving of her relationship, confronted her in her partner's absence and threatened her.advertisementLater, in November 2014, a quarrel over water usage with her landlord's brother escalated. He called the two accused, who arrived with another man and a juvenile. A friend of the woman and her partner also came to help but was assaulted along with the couple. The accused forced the woman and her friend to strip, filmed them, and then let the friend go.The landlord's brother and one other man then left. The remaining three — two main accused and the juvenile — took the woman and her partner to Nandori railway tracks, where they tried to kill the partner by placing him on the tracks. He escaped.Over the next couple of days, the three raped the woman at different locations. When they learned that police were searching for them, they took her into a forest, initially planning to kill her. They eventually abandoned her, and she later reached a police station.Six people were prosecuted. The trial court sentenced the landlord's brother to 10 years in prison and gave life terms to the two main accused. Others received lesser punishments.The High Court reduced the life sentences of the two main accused to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment, citing the nature of the crime. Both had already served 10 years. One accused was acquitted, another's sentence was reduced, and one died during the appeal. The landlord's brother's sentence was upheld.Must Watch