Noida: A court has acquitted a man of rape charges after the complainant could not be traced and the prosecution said it would not present more witnesses. It held that the charges were not proved beyond reasonable doubt and cleared the accused, who had been out on bail since June 2023.An FIR had been filed at the Sector 24 police station on Sept 11, 2017, by a woman from Jharkhand, who told police that she was staying at the man’s house for the tribal harvest festival of Karma. She alleged that the previous night, when she was sleeping, he entered her room, removed her clothes and committed a “wrong act”. Police registered a case under IPC section 376, recorded her statement, conducted a medical examination and filed a chargesheet on March 16, 2018. A fast-track court framed charges on Dec 12 that year.The prosecution did not produce the complainant or her sister and came up with three witnesses – the officer who wrote the FIR, the investigator and the doctor who conducted the test. Several attempts were made by the prosecution to serve the summons to the complainant and her sister at their addresses in Jharkhand and Delhi. The woman’s neighbours and landlord told police that she had not lived at either of the addresses for several years. The women remained untraceable.Special public prosecutor JP Bhati gave in writing that he would not produce any more witnesses. Defence counsel Manoj Teotiya argued that the allegations against his client were not proved in the absence of the complainant and any other evidence, and hence he deserved to be acquitted.The court noted that there was no corroborative evidence of rape and the medical report did not mention whether it was a penetrative sexual assault. The woman’s statement recorded under 164 CrPC does not clearly say that she was raped. “The woman in her statement to the magistrate described the act as a ‘wrong act’. There is also a major contradiction in the time of the offence as per the prosecution’s story and the statement given by her to the doctor,” judge Vikas Nagar said. “Under these circumstances, the allegations are not proven. Taking into consideration the cardinal principle of jurisprudence that the accused should be given benefit of the doubt, he deserves to be acquitted.”The court ordered the man to execute a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and furnish one surety of the like amount within the next seven days.
