Gujarat High Court found the story “utterly unnatural, unconvincing, and inconsistent with the behaviour of a genuine victim of harassment” and quashed the molestation charges levelled by the woman against her lover. Ahmedabad: A neighbour’s alleged romantic overtures, a husband arriving just in time, a dramatic escape and a mobile phone left behind at the doorstep may make for a crime thriller, but not quite a convincing criminal case.
The case was from Bhavnagar, where the woman lodged an FIR with the Nilambaug police against her neighbour in Feb 2016. She gave the mobile phone to police, who filed an FIR invoking Section 354 of IPC. She alleged that the neighbour had been harassing her for three months, repeatedly making romantic advances and showing her obscene clips on his mobile phone whenever she stepped out. On the day she filed the complaint, he rang her doorbell, entered her house and professed his affection. When she spurned his advances, he allegedly threatened to kill her husband. The plot thickened when the woman claimed that her husband arrived during the confrontation, forcing the accused to flee. He dropped his mobile phone at the doorstep as he left.
HC said, “The story of setting a pre-arranged trap to catch the petitioner red-handed is an afterthought. It strongly corroborates the defence’s case that the husband unexpectedly caught the petitioner and the complainant together, and to cover up the domestic fallout, embarrassment, or suspicion arising therefrom, an embellished version of a forced entry and outraging of modesty under Section 354 IPC is concocted. ” While quashing the FIR, HC said, “When the foundational premise of the FIR — relying on a staged confrontation cooked up after an unexpected encounter — is inherently improbable and lacks judicial creditworthiness, pushing the accused through the rigmarole of a full trial would be abuse of process of law.” After the hearing, Justice P M Raval found the woman’s account of a pre-planned attempt to catch the accused red-handed too implausible to withstand judicial scrutiny.