You are currently viewing According to the Andhra Pradesh High Court, the SC/ST Act is not applicable where the crime is not committed with the intent that the victim belongs to a specific caste.

According to the Andhra Pradesh High Court, the SC/ST Act is not applicable where the crime is not committed with the intent that the victim belongs to a specific caste.

The petitioner, a CISF constable, and the de facto complaint, a law graduate, had been dating for the previous six years. The complainant claimed that over the 2019 Dussehra holiday, the petitioner visited her room when her companions weren’t there and engaged in sexual activity with her after pledging to marry her. Later, when she inquired about the commitment with the petitioner, he instructed her to hold off for six months. The petitioner still hadn’t replied more than a year later.

According to the complaint, the accused is a member of the washerman community and refused to wed her because the complainant is from a different caste and his parents would not approve of the union. The petitioner has been detained by authorities since May 19,2022. According to the petitioner’s attorney, there were no obvious elements in the FIR that would have justified applying the aforementioned punitive penalties to the petitioner. He claimed that at the time of the alleged offence, the de facto complainant was over the age of eighteen and had earned a law degree.

He claimed that Section 376 of the IPC was not applicable because the encounter in 2019 included consenting intercourse. According to Sainath, giving in to deception does not constitute consenting to sex. He argued that the complainant was duped into thinking the petitioner would marry her before they had sex, and as a result, the consent was falsely induced. The petitioner relied on the case of Dhruvaram Muralidhar Sonar.

In this matter, the petitioner had submitted one under Section 482 of Crpc. Although he had vowed to marry the complainant, the petitioner in that instance had continued their intimate contact. In these situations, the court must carefully consider whether the complainant truly wants to marry the victim or if he had ulterior intentions and made a false promise to this effect merely to gratify his desires. The latter situation falls under the category of cheating or deceit. The complainant’s account was examined by the court, which revealed that the claimed encounter was consensual and might not be covered under Section 376 of the IPC.

The petitioner’s attendance was not necessary for the custodial questioning because the inquiry was finished. Regarding the violations of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, it was said that the petitioner had sex with the complainant while promising to marry her, but not with the purpose that she belonged to the SC & ST caste. The petition was approved when the Court granted the petitioner bail.

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