Supreme Court: The bench of Hemant Gupta and Vikram Nath, JJ has granted pre-arrest bail to a man in a case relating to the rape of the woman he had been in a relationship with for four years.
When the relationship between the bail applicant and the complainant started, the complainant was 21 years of age. Taking these factors together, the Court observed,
“… the complainant has willingly been staying with the appellant and had the relationship. Therefore, now if the relationship is not working out, the same cannot be a ground for lodging an FIR for the offence under Section 376(2)(n) IPC.”
The Court, hence, set aside the order of the Rajasthan High Court, and directed the applicant to be released on bail to the satisfaction of the competent authority
The Court, however, made clear that the observations made by it were only for the purposes of deciding the pre-arrest bail application and that the investigation shall proceed uninfluenced by them.
[Ansaar Mohammad v. State of Rajasthan, CRIMINAL APPEAL NO.962 OF 2022, order dated 14.07.2022]
For Petitioner(s): Arjun Singh Bhati, AOR
For Respondent(s): AOR Himanshu Sharma and Advocates Aditi Sharma, Seeta Ram Sharma, Ram Niwas Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Sandeep Singh, Saurav Arora
