E-Paper
A woman can be prosecuted for gang rape: HC
Elaborating the provisions of IPC sections 375 and 376 related to the offence of rape (amended in 2013), Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav rejected the plea that a woman cannot be prosecuted for the alleged commission of the offence of gang rape
PRAYAGRAJ The Allahabad high court on Monday observed that a woman cannot commit the offence of rape, but if she facilitates the act of rape with a group of men, then she may be prosecuted for the offence of ‘gang rape’ under Section 376D of the IPC in view of the amended provisions.
Elaborating the provisions of IPC sections 375 and 376 related to the offence of rape (amended in 2013), Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav rejected the plea that a woman cannot be prosecuted for the alleged commission of the offence of gang rape.
With these observations, the court dismissed a Section 482 CrPC application moved by one Suneeta Pandey, who was summoned by the additional district and sessions judge-I Siddharth Nagar to face trial under Sections 376-D (gang rape) and 212 (harbouring offender) of the IPC in connection with the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl.
“A woman cannot commit the offence of rape, but if she facilitated the act of rape with a group of people, then she may be prosecuted for gang rape in view of the amended provisions,” observed the court while rejecting the plea of the woman applicant.
The incident took place in June 2015 and the FIR was lodged by the informant against unknown persons in July 2015 under Sections 363 and 366 (kidnapping) of the IPC, alleging therein that someone enticed the daughter of the informant aged about 15 years and took her with him.
In her statement before the court under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the victim stated that the applicant was involved in the alleged incident, but was not named in the chargesheet. Thereafter, she filed an application under Section 319 CrPC for summoning the applicant and the court below allowed the said plea.
Pursuant to this, the applicant moved the present application before the high court, seeking to quash the summoning order as well as to stay the further proceedings in the case on the ground that being a lady, no offence under Section 376-D (gang rape) of the IPC was made out against the applicant, hence she had been wrongly summoned by the trial court.
Taking into account the facts of the case, the court, at the outset, noted that the argument that a lady cannot be prosecuted for gang rape is not correct as per the amended provisions of Sections 375 to 376E of the IPC, which relates to the offence of rape.
The court observed that though it was clear by the non-ambiguous language of Section 375 of the IPC that a woman cannot commit rape as the section specifically states that the act of rape can only be done by a ‘man’ and not by ‘any woman’, however, the court added, the same is not the case with Section 376D (gang rape) of the IPC.
