Ahmedabad: A 32-year-old man from the city accused by a sex worker of rape after falsely promising her marriage has failed to get relief after a local court here refused to discharge him.
The man, living in eastern Ahmedabad, was charged with rape, assault, and criminal intimidation by Naroda police in the city in 2023, following a complaint filed by a woman from West Bengal, who came here in 2021 for prostitution. A sessions court granted him anticipatory bail on grounds that he was living with the woman for a couple of years before the relationship went awry and the complaint was filed. When the man sought discharge from the case on grounds that it was a long-term relationship between him and the complainant, and the charge of rape would not be applicable in his case, the prosecutor opposed his plea.
The prosecutor submitted, “The material presented in the record is only to be examined at a preliminary stage to frame charges. There was a physical relationship between the accused and the victim. However, the victim alleges that the accused, by giving a promise of marriage, engaged in physical relation with her multiple times without fulfilling that promise. In such a situation, a case for framing charges against the accused is made out.”
The complainant’s lawyer also opposed the discharge plea. His submission, as recorded in the court order, was, “The victim came to Ahmedabad for prostitution. Subsequently, the accused came into contact with her as a customer. Thereafter, a relationship developed between them.”
The court also reviewed the statement of the complainant recorded by the police, in which she narrated at length how she came to Ahmedabad and stayed in a hotel in Nana Chiloda, how the accused frequented her as a customer, and after a couple of months promised to marry her. They met each other’s families and went on a Goa trip too. They quarrelled when the man went to West Bengal to meet her family.
After the hearing, additional sessions judge M B Kotak rejected the discharge application and stated, “At the stage of framing charges, it is required to evaluate the material with a limited objective. In this matter, if the victim’s statement is that the accused made physical relations with her by giving her false promise of marriage and later retracted from that promise — and if the accused denies this statement and his defence is not found to be acceptable — then it cannot be assumed that the accused has not committed an offence.”