Will you marry the victim?

CJI’S POSER TO ALLEGED RAPIST WHO IS ALREADY MARRIED

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India Sharad Bobde on Monday granted protection to two alleged rapists, one from Maharashtra and another from Uttar Pradesh.

It asked Mohit Subhash Chavan (23) from Maharashtra, accused of raping a minor girl studying then in Class IX in 2016 when she was 16, whether he will marry her. It was hearing a petition filed by the man who is now an electricity department employee in the state, against an order of the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court, cancelling his anticipatory bail.

The FIR against him was lodged in 2019 by the victim girl on turning a major, under Sections 376, 417, 506 of the Indian Penal Code and under Sections 4 and 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act), 2012. She alleged that Chavan had forcibly entered here house and raped her and persisted with the sexual assault till she was in class XII.

To a pointed question by the CJI "will you marry her?" his counsel Anand Dilip Langde said he will have to take instructions from the client, noting that Chavan will be suspended from service if arrested in the case. "If you want to marry, we can help you. If not, you lose your job and go to jail for seducing and raping a minor girl," the CJI remarked.

The girl had gone to the police after the first rape. Chavan's mother held out an assurance that he would marry her and a document was eventually drawn up stating that the marriage would take place