Mumbai, Jun 12 In a traditional society like India, families struggle to report sexual assault and harassment cases, and such matters cannot be quashed merely due to delay in lodging an FIR, the Bombay High Court has said while refusing relief to a man accused of molesting his domestic help.
A single bench of Justice Ranjitsinha Bhonsale, in the order on Wednesday, dismissed the petition filed by a 58-year-old Kerala-based man seeking to quash the FIR registered against him in 2019 for allegedly outraging the modesty of his domestic help.
As per the complaint, when the victim went to the accused's house for her work on March 10, 2019, he allegedly molested her. The woman managed to run away from there after which she informed her husband about the alleged incident.
Her husband then informed the society members about the incident. The woman lodged a complaint against the accused on April 2, based on which the FIR was registered.
The accused, in his petition in HC, questioned this delay and said he was falsely implicated by the woman and her husband who had demanded money from him.
He also claimed that the CCTV footage of the day of the alleged incident shows the woman leaving the building in a calm and composed manner.
The high court, however, refused to accept both the contentions and said prima facie a case was made out against the accused.
"In a traditional society like ours, unfortunately, many families find it exceedingly and extremely difficult to initiate even a genuine criminal prosecution when such nature of offences are involved," it observed.
Hence, in such matters delay alone cannot be a ground to quash a criminal prosecution, the court noted.
"In my opinion, cases relating to offences against women and similar cases, the criminal prosecution ought not to be thrown out on the sole ground of unexplained delay unless the delay is attributed to some mala fides, personal vengeance or vendetta which is prima facie made out," the judge said.
