‘Consensual sex under fear is rape’
The Supreme Court has ruled that a person cannot take the plea of consensual sex and he can be convicted for rape if the victim had consented to the act out of fear.
Moreover, the apex court said that seldom does a victim or the family falsely implicate a person as the stigma would only ruin their reputation and rejected the plea that the complaint was lodged after four months.
“It can be held that a woman has given consent only if she has freely agreed to submit herself, while in free and unconstrained possession of her physical and moral power to act in a manner she wanted. Consent implies the exercise of a free and untrammeled right to forbid or withhold what is being consented to, it always is a voluntary and conscious acceptance of what is proposed to be done by another and concurred to by the former.
“An act of helplessness in the face of inevitable compulsions is not consent in law. More so, it is not necessary that there should be actual use of force. A threat of use of force is sufficient,” a bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan said in a judgement.
The apex court delivered the verdict while dismissing the appeal filed by the convict Satpal Singh.
Post new comment