Imagine your brother, father, son, or husband convicted in a rape case. That’s quite hard to imagine, right?
Now, think of those against whom false rape cases are filed. The impact of false accusations on mental health, career and the whole life of men is beyond salvaging. In India, the number of such men is high. These men charged with false accusations for rape are ostracized which force them to live in fear or resort to suicide.
Alarming increment in false rape cases
In 2018, a mother accused her 20-year-old son of raping her. After he spent 1.5 years in jail, his mother accepted that she had filed a false rape case against her own son.
She claimed that since the son became aggressive and there was no other male member in the house. Thus, she filed a false rape complaint.
Earlier as reported by TFI, for the past 20 years, an accused Vishnu has been in jail. The acquittal came after the Allahabad HC found that the trial court had ‘materially erred’ while convicting him. The Court’s acquittal was based on the medical examination report which found no semen or injuries on the prosecutrix, who was five months pregnant at the time she claimed to be raped.
Read more: Man spends 20 years in jail under false rape charges under SC/ST Act
Another case was reported in which a 22-year-old woman was arrested by Gurugram Police for alleged extortion of money from a man. The woman also threatened the man to falsely accuse him of a rape case if he refused to marry or did not pay the money.
On 23 August 2015, Sarvjeet and Jasleen Kaur had a scuffle, following which Jasleen had threatened him with dire consequences. Subsequently, she uploaded a Facebook post, alleging that Sarvjeet had molested him, and threatened her with dire consequences. Following the accusation, people reacted almost immediately to the same, without even analysing the case rationally.
However, after 4 years of suffering, Sarvjeet was acquitted of the charges. But there were no actions taken against Jasleen.
As per the statistics by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), about 74% of rape cases under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code end up acquitting the accused.
Consensual acts turn to rape after a breakup
In the last few years, we have witnessed multiple cases where women file fake rape cases against men after a breakup. Undoubtedly, there are a vast number of rape cases in India and the accused are believed to go unreported. But it cannot be denied that women often file cases against their respective partners once consensual relationships turn sour.
The chief of Chhattisgarh’s women’s commission, Kiranmayee Nayak, had once said, “If a married man lures a girl into an affair, she must understand whether the man is lying to them and whether he will help them survive or not. If that is not the case, both of them, mostly the women, approach the police.”
She further added, “In most of the cases, girls have a consensual relationship, a live-in setup and then file an FIR (First Information Report) for rape after separation.”
In addition to the above statements, the Delhi High Court had observed in 2017 that “This court had observed on number of occasions that the number of cases where both persons, out of their own will and choice, develop consensual physical relationship, when the relationship breaks up due to some reason, the women use the law as a weapon for vengeance and personal vendetta.”
It further added, “They tend to convert such consensual acts as an incidents of rape may be out of anger and frustration thereby defeating the very purpose of the provision. This requires a clear demarcation between the rape and consensual sex especially in the case where complaint is that consent had been given on promise of marriage.”
Notably, the court’s ruling came while denying the plea of a 29-year-old woman, who had filed a case against her husband, seeking action in the rape case before marrying the man in 2015.
In a nutshell, false rape cases filed for the nefarious agenda have become a menace to the nation. It vindicates the weaker position of Indian men in the judicial system today which considers women as the victims and men as the aggressors. The laws meant to protect genuine victims are being misused by some opportunistic women. It is high time people realize that crime has no gender and before convicting a man on false accusations, investigations need to be done thoroughly.