Have you ever wondered how it feels when someone tries to put allegations on you when you know you never had any such intentions. Someone has for the sake of fame, money or revenge has portrayed the story against you.

In India, we know how rape cases are rising every other day and nobody can decline how heinous crimes are getting against women, they are burnt, harassed, raped, and many more. The Indian laws have now advanced for the women and strict punishments are been taken but only when they are reported. In our country most of the cases are not even reported because of family pressures and many more. But the cases reported includes;

• Where the accuser made the story up.
• Where investigations factually proved the rape never occurred.
• When DNA was used to exonerate the accused.

In some case women do not willfully agree to alleges the commission of fake rape and they are compelled by their family members, relatives, close friends out of their greediness and for gaining other benefits likes to extort money. In Radhu v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2007), the court held that false allegation of rape is rare and even the instance where the parents force their obedient daughters to make false rape allegations to take revenge or extort money or from getting rid of their financial liability are also rare.

In a case of Delhi, the Delhi High court’s judgment has referred to terming such falsely accused men as rape case survivor, a term used first in a judgment by Justice Virender Bhat, again about a rape case in Delhi; probably because Delhi has become the false rape capital of India. It stated:

One way to avoid such humiliation, media trials, ignominy for the falsely accused is to modify the law so that identity of rape accused is also kept secret till trial and conviction.  Such a law was there in UK law books for many years before it was taken away, presumably not to discourage women from coming forward in reporting rape cases.  Such a logic can only be feminist logic, because for a raped woman to get justice, it should not be important whether the face of accused man is flashed all over MSM and social media, what’s important is only that the prosecution and trial are done fairly and speedily. 

But feminists are more concerned about creating rape hysteria, and if it destroys some men’s reputations and their lives, so be it, so for them such a law to keep accused’s identity secret will not serve that purpose. Above  “dignity and honour of a man” passage was much quoted in the press, and it gave the impression that the court has proactively done something to help the falsely accused man in this case.  However, it seems that the court has just made the observations about dignity/honour etc of men, and let the man himself file a case for damages on the falsely accusing woman, if advised. 

Given the general lack of precedents and lack of knowledge in this area, about how to get compensation either from state or from prosecutrix, I don’t know what advice can this man get to claim damages.  More useful would be if the courts could evolve an automatic rule to order an enquiry under applicable sections like IPC 182, 211 etc against false rape accusers, since most of these provisions of law cannot be invoked by the accused himself, unless ordered by the police or judiciary.  Most accused wouldn’t have sufficient knowledge of the law to make use of these provisions.  So in most likelihood these sections will remain the toothless provisions they have always been, for a long time to come.  And as a society, we can continue to sleep believing that our laws are serving the purpose they were written for.

Some of the consequences of the false accusations of rape includes mental health, suicides, loss of honor and dignity, unnecessary detention, misuse of law. With the passage of time number of fake rape cases are also increasing where some innocents are convicted and some are acquitted, but this conviction or acquittal is only making the difference on the detention of a person as when they are proved innocent are set free. The only point which is common in both is that, it fixes its permanent impression on persons mind which in turn affects the mental state of a person and cannot be substituted even by the monetary compensation. The lost of reputation, honour, dignity and the status of the person against whom the false charges are made cannot be restored easily and the only solution is to provide them financial stability.

Refrences:

1. https://menrightsindia.net/2016/01/delhi-sessions-court-raises-question-dignity-falsely-accused-men-rape-cases.html
2. https://lawlex.org/lex-pedia/the-consequences-of-false-rape-accusation/23474

Aishwarya Says:

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