Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court says rapist destroys victim’s soul but grants bail to accused

“The offence charged against the accused is heinous in nature and highly anti-social. A murderer destroys the physical body of a victim, but a rapist destroys the very soul of the victim. Society looks with great apathy and hatred at an unchaste girl, and it is immaterial whether she becomes so by a voluntary act or under force or compulsion,” the court said.

The judge, however, noted that the accused has been in custody in the case since 2024, for more than a year and the trial was underway with the survivor’s statement already being recorded.

“There is no apprehension of the accused influencing the survivor so as to dissuade her from making a factual account of the occurrence at the trial,” the order noted.

Background

After the bail plea was rejected by the trial court, the accused moved the high court for bail.

He was booked in 2019 under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act later replaced with Section 376 (rape) of Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) on trail court’s conclusion that survivor is major based on her statement.

On the grounds of being a law-abiding citizen of India, and the change in survivor’s statement in the later stage of the case, the accused sought enforcement of his constitutional and other legal rights. He claimed to be an innocent and has been falsely implicated in the case.

The accused’s counsel argued that the survivor has subsequently made improvements in her statement at subsequent stages of the criminal proceedings are the outcome of exaggerations and manipulations.

He further argued that at the initial stage when the offences under POCSO Act were there in the case and charge was also framed by the trial court, the alleged survivor who had engaged a counsel on her behalf did not raise any plea regarding the commission of offence under Section 376  RPC in the case, which clearly demonstrates that the allegation of rape was conceived only after the failure of the prosecution to sustain the charge under POCSO Act against the petitioner.

The prosecution, however, opposed the bail application on the grounds that the accused had committed a heinous crime, which was non-bailable, striking at the very core of societal morality.

The prosecutor submitted that the accused cannot claim bail as a matter of right and his application outrightly deserved to be dismissed.

“The petitioners being highly influential, there exists a reasonable and well-founded apprehension that if enlarged on bail, the accused may influence or intimidate the prosecution witnesses, thereby obstructing a fair course of justice,” the prosecution argued, adding that the mere fact that the petitioner had been in detention doesn’t entitle him to the concession of bail.