Govt must rehabilitate persons falsely accused of rape: Court

NEW DELHI: The government must frame a comprehensive policy for rehabilitation of persons accused and jailed on false rape charges, a fast track court has held while acquitting a man in a kidnap-cum-rape case.


Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat, while acquitting Haryana-resident Subhash of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a seventh grader, asked Secretaries of the Home and Law Ministries and the Chairman of Law Commission of India to consider his suggestion.

"The court feels that there is immense need for a rehabilitation policy for such people who had faced incarceration in jail and trial in court on false charges of rape," the ASJ said.

"The government must frame a comprehensive policy for rehabilitation of such persons so that the future of a responsible and law abiding person, who has been jailed on the false rape charges, is secured and he does not face difficulties in settling down in life, after his acquittal," the court said.

"It is the duty of the government to suitably compensate these persons in order to prevent them from taking to criminal activities," the ASJ said.

The court made the observations while acquitting Subhash who was accused of kidnapping the girl in March 2007 from outside her school and forcibly taking her to various places along with his two friends and repeatedly raping her.

Police rescued the victim was rescued from a house in Bikaner, Rajasthan and arrested the accused there.

Subhash, however, told the court that it was the girl who had pressurised him for marriage and she had threatened to commit suicide if he would not marry her.

He denied that he had raped the girl and added that she had accompanied him to Jaipur on her own volition as they were in love since January, 2007.