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SC: No leniency to rapists even if they marry victims
R Sedhuraman
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, August 27
The Supreme Court today ruled that rapists deserve no leniency even if they married the victims or reached a compromise. A three-member Bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam made the clarification while rejecting the plea of two persons from Haryana who had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for gang raping a girl in Nangal Durgu village in Mahendragarh district in December 1995.

Taking serious note of the fact that high courts and trial courts were taking “a softer view” while awarding sentence in rape cases involving marriage or compromise between the accused the victim, the SC said this “trend exhibits stark insensitivity to the need for proportionate punishments to be imposed in such cases.”

The Bench, which included Justices Ranjana Desai and Ranjan Gogoi, also advised the judiciary below not to show any leniency to the rapists, citing reasons such as “religion, race, caste, economic or social status of the accused or the victim or the long pendency of the criminal trial or offer of the rapist to marry the victim or the victim is married and settled in life.”

These “cannot be construed as special factors for reducing the sentence prescribed by the statute.” Judiciary’s discretionary power to award a sentence for less than 10 years (the minimum punishment for gang rape) citing adequate and special reasons “should not be used indiscriminately in a routine, casual and cavalier manner,” the apex court held.

The rapists from Haryana had pleaded for reducing their sentence to the period already undergone as the victim had filed an affidavit in the SC, stating that she did not want to pursue the case for several reasons - she was a consenting party to the “alleged act, settled/compromised” the matter with the accused persons, she was married since 1999 and had four children and wanted to buy peace and maintain dignity in her matrimonial life. She also said she had no objection if the sentence was reduced.

The Additional Sessions Judge, Narnaul, had sentenced the accused on March 31, 1998, while a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had dismissed their appeals on February 22, 2011, prompting them to come to the SC. When the case was pending in the SC, the convicts claimed they had reached a settlement with the victim on December 24, 2011.

The SC also clarified that courts “cannot always be assured that the consent given by the victim in compromising the case is a genuine consent. There is every chance that she might have been pressurised by the convicts or the trauma undergone by her all the years might have compelled her to opt for a compromise…

“So, in the interest of justice and to avoid unnecessary pressure/harassment to the victim it would not be safe in considering the compromise arrived at between the parties in rape cases to be a ground for the Court to exercise the discretionary power under the proviso of Section 376(2) of IPC.”