Any delay on the part of an Indian married woman, who is subjected to rape by a stranger, in reporting the matter to the police is natural, as the first instinct of such a victim will always be to confide in her husband and await action on his part, the Supreme Court has said.
The Apex Court held in a case that delay to lodge an FIR cannot be used as a ground by the accused to defeat the victim’s testimony. The case related to an incident of April 18, 1994 from Chhattisgarh where the trial court and the High Court had convicted a man of rape. The crime occurred at midnight when the woman stepped out of her house to relieve herself.
The man dragged the victim and forcibly raped her. She narrated the incident to her sister-in-law and by the time her husband arrived it was evening and the matter got reported to the police late.The accused, Mukesh, challenged the concurrent findings of the two courts before the apex court. Among the other grounds taken in his defence, he alleged delay to lodge FIR to doubt the veracity of the incident.
Dealing with this argument, the Bench of Justices V Gopala Gowda and Adarsh Kumar Goel said, “It is clear from the facts and circumstances of the case that the prosecutrix (victim) being a married lady, could not have lodged the FIR on her own, especially in case of Indian circumstances.”
Explaining further, the Bench stated that facts on record showed that her husband was not in the village and returned on the evening following the incident.“Hence it is natural for her to wait for husband to return,” the Court said in its judgement. The police station was situated 20 km from the victim’s residence and hence the bench concluded that the accused cannot get the benefit of delay in filing of complaint.