Delhi court acquits two men of raping woman

New Delhi: A Delhi court has acquitted two men of rape and extortion charges after the alleged victim retracted from her statement.

The two men, residents of Haryana, were freed of charges of extorting Rs 1.6 lakhs from the woman after threatening to make some of her objectionable photographs public. Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna said that the prosecutrix deposition is not "trustworthy" and cannot be relied upon to convict the accused on any count. "The prosecutrix (woman) herself had denied of being gangraped or that the accused being in possession of her nude photographs or they ever threatened to make her photographs public, it cannot be said that they committed an offence of extortion...," the Judge said. The judge also said that levelling allegation of rape against the accused and then retracting from it in the court is a "serious matter" and her testimony needed to be discarded. The two persons were arrested by the police in December 2010, on a complaint filed by the woman, a share-broker, who had claimed that she became friends with one of them through a social networking site and used to meet him. She claimed that one day she went to the flat of one of the accused`s friend in south Delhi where she was "gang-raped" by the two men after she consumed a sedatives-laced drink and became unconscious. She had also claimed that before the incident, while chatting with the accused, she fell in love with him and had sent him some objectionable photographs of her. The police told the court that the two men had extorted Rs 1.6 lakhs from the woman by threatening her that they would upload the photographs on Internet, if she failed to pay the money. "Though, the woman deposed of depositing money in the bank accounts of accused but the prosecution failed to produce any bank statement to support the claims of the prosecutrix. "In view of her contradictory statements, the prosecutrix deposition is not trustworthy and cannot be relied upon to convict the accused on any count," the court observed.