The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court pulled up an additional sessions judge for using slang words and foul language while recording the testimony of a rape complaint and in the judgement he wrote later, Live Law reported on Thursday.
A bench of Justices Ravindra Ghuge and BU Debadwar said in the ruling on March 1, which was made public on Thursday, that the words used by the lower court judge were “utterly disrespectful” to women.
The High Court was hearing a plea filed by the Maharashtra government challenging an August 2012 judgment of a sessions court acquitting a 52-year-old man in a rape case. The prosecution’s case was that the accused, who is related to the complainant, raped her at her house in March 2010.
“At the very outset, we need to record our strong displeasure about the choice of a particular word, which has been repeatedly used by the learned Additional Sessions Judge SV Ranpise in the judgment,” the bench said.
The court noted that even though the complainant, in her testimony in Marathi, had not used any objectionable terms, the judge repeatedly used them while drafting the judgement in English. “These words are used in slang language, are treated to be foul words and are utterly disrespectful to women,” the judgment said.
The Bombay High Court also dismissed the appeal against the man’s acquittal, observing that the prosecution had failed to submit any evidence to prove his guilt. The court observed that no injuries were found on the woman, no semen stains were found on her clothes, and that she did not have any wounds on her thighs or legs either.
The Court also noted that the woman’s claim that she had slapped the accused was not supported by medical evidence as there was no slap imprint or abrasions on his face.
It added, “The Prosecutor was unable to convince it that though the prosecutrix does not have a single abrasion on her body and her entire narration of several injuries as noted above, have been proved to be false, we could still arrive at a conclusion that the accused and the accused alone, had committed the offence.”
The court further cited its previous ruling that suspicion, however strong it may be, cannot be a substitute for substantive evidence, and observed, “the court cannot base it’s order of conviction on the basis of suspicion”.
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