The Delhi High Court in the case observed wherein the 20-year-old student and his 35-year-old teacher got married, but later the teacher accused him of rape.
The Delhi High Court in the case observed and has granted the student anticipatory bail, while considering the circumstances of the case.
The court noted that the teacher, who holds a PhD and is employed as a professor, was in a ‘guru-shishya’ relationship with the student and it has also been mentioned by the court that the teacher was already married when she entered into a relationship with the student, indicating that it was a choice rather than compulsion.
The said court also questioned the delay in filing the FIR without a reasonable explanation.
In the present case, the A 20-year-old student got married to his 35-year-old teacher who later filed a case accusing him of rape, criminal conspiracy, and the other offences.
The Delhi High Court in the case while accepting the heinousness, gravity, and severity of punishment in a case filed under the Indian Penal Code’s as stated under section 376 for rape, still decided to take due note of the circumstances of the case and granted him anticipatory bail.
The court in the case also observed that the prosecutrix was admittedly in a ‘guru-shishya’ relation with the applicant.
The single-judge bench headed by Justice Saurabh Banerjee in the case remarked that this court also cannot lose sight of the fact that as the prosecutrix, admittedly, holds a PhD in marketing, she is certainly highly educated, and on this strength, gainfully employed as a professor in a reputed university in Gurgaon whereas the applicant herein was or is merely a student studying in the same university.
It has also been informed by her to the court that she met with the youth’s family but was forced to terminate her pregnancies.
The counsel, Senior Advocate Pramod Kumar Dubey, appearing for the applicant, argued before the court that applicant had not sought to harm or threaten the prosecutrix.
The court stated that it could not be ‘oblivious of the fact’ that the prosecutrix was a mature adult woman, who at the time of entering in a relationship with the applicant, a young boy aged less than around 20 years, was already being married.
The court observed that it would also not be wrong for this court to infer that she was well aware of the repercussions of entering into a relationship with such an underage individual ‘student’.
Therefore, the prosecutrix chose not only to enter into a relationship with the applicant but also continue with the same for more than a year.
The bench while considering the facts and circumstances of the case stated that the prosecutrix was in relationship with the applicant out of choice rather out of compulsion.
The court also raised the questions over the delay in the filing of the FIR on July 19, when she had come in contact with the applicant in February 2022 without plausible explanation of the delay.