New Delhi: A man has been sentenced by a
Delhi court to seven years in jail for raping his brother`s
wife and threatening her with dire consequences to her as well
as her daughter in case she told anybody about the crime.
"The victim was not likely to make complaints of this
nature unless there had been a ring of truth," District Judge-
cum-Additional Sessions Judge Sunita Gupta observed while
holding the accused guilty of rape on victim`s testimony.
The victim, who is the mother of a one-and-a-
half-year-old daughter was raped by her brother-in-law Anil
Kumar on the intervening night of December 31, 2009 and
January 1, 2010.
On December 31, the victim along with her husband had
come back home after attending the last rites of her uncle,
when her brother-in-law visited them and had dinner with them.
Her husband asked her to take food and go upstairs
with their daughter to sleep, to which she obliged. Both the
men then consumed liquor.
At about 1 am, Anil entered her room and raped her. To
commit the crime, he also threatened to strangulate her if she
created noise or disclosed the incident to anybody.
The accused then went to sleep in another room and
left home for work the next morning.
She informed her mother-in-law about the incident, who
tried to hush up the matter and asked her to take bath. When
her mother telephoned her to greet her on new year, she
narrated the incident to her.
On hearing it, her mother, brother and sister-in-law
came to her house and took the victim to the police station
and lodged the complaint. The accused was arrested on January
2, 2010.
While finding him guilty of rape, the court dismissed
his contentions that all the witnesses were close relatives of
the victim.
"It may be mentioned that in such matters, victim
normally confides in close relatives only," the court said.
The court held that the testimony of the victim did
not need corroboration as she had tried to inform about the
incident firstly to her husband, who however, was in state of
intoxication and did not wake up.
"She must be conscious that if she is not found to
be true, her husband may suspect her throughout her life and
may even get to the extent of divorcing her suspecting her
loyalty. In the face of all this, she gathered courage and
made a complaint," the judge noted.
On the contention that the victim had no injury on her
person and that makes her testimony doubtful, the court
observed, "The victim was a married lady. She has testified
that although she tried to resist by pushing the accused and
slapping, however, she could not offer much resistance as he
caught hold of her daughter by neck and threatened to
strangulate her.
"That being so, it was obvious that for the safety of
her child, she could not resist to maximum possibility and may
be because of that reason there are no injury mark on her
person."
PTI
