A sessions court on Thursday acquitted a 39-year-old facing rape charges from a woman he had married in 2012. The duo’s marriage was declared illegal by a family court as he was yet to formally divorce his wife. This had lead to the woman filing a rape case against him, but she later turned hostile in court.
As per the woman’s complaint at Mulund police station, they had met through a matrimonial website for divorcees. He had proposed to her and they had married in 2012 in Chennai with consent of both their families. She resided with him for 2.5 years, but then had filed domestic violence proceedings due to harassment by him and his mother. He had approached the family court for dissolution of their marriage. The court had asked him to produce the decree of divorce in his first marriage and he said it was dissolved by a panchayat. The family court had then declared the marriage of the man and the complainant illegal as he had not legally divorced his first wife.
The complainant had then approached the police with this complaint of rape and also cheating as he had taken Rs. 5 lakhs worth of gold ornaments from her as dowry.
In court the woman was declared hostile by the prosecution as she said she does not know Hindi or Marathi and cannot tell about the correctness of her statements to the police. She also denied her statement recorded before a magistrate. She said further in court that the man had not approached her as a divorcee and that they stayed in a live-in relationship and never had sexual relations.
