MP high court quashes FIR against rape accused who married minor girl, had child

The court quashed the first information report (FIR) registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) after the girl reached the court with her one-and-a-half-year-old child and said she had gone with the accused willingly

The Gwalior bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court acquitted a rape accused, who ran away with a minor girl and married her, saying the conviction would impact not one but many lives.

The court said that the girl left her maternal home voluntarily, married the accused, had a child and is living peacefully with her husband (Representative Photo)

The court quashed the first information report (FIR) registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) after the girl reached the court with her one-and-a-half-year-old child and said she had gone with the accused willingly.

In the order, a single bench of Justice Anand Pathak said, “The fact remains that petitioner and respondent are married couple and both were living in the same household. They are blessed with a child. It is regular and easy to be retributive but at the same time, a judge has to sublimely feel the pulse of the case. One cannot forget that every ‘FILE’ is made of the same alphabet, as ‘LIFE’.”

“Here ‘FILE’ before this court carries not only a ‘LIFE’ but many LIVES. Therefore, this court, under the obtaining facts and circumstances of the case, intends to tread on the path of reformative or at least other than retributive one because a girl of tender age around (16-17 years) has fallen in love with a boy of 23 years and driven by hormones they shared emotional and physical proximity and moved out of social/legal limits,” the court order read.

A missing complaint was filed on June 26, 2021, by the father of the girl at the time when she was 16. Acting on the complaint, the police began looking for the girl and found her on April 6, 2022, in Kanpur, but she refused to return home. The girl was living at Nari Niketan, where she gave birth to a baby in 2022, according to the police.

The court said that the girl left her maternal home voluntarily, married the accused, had a child and is living peacefully with her husband. In case of any punishment, the petitioner may have to go to jail and would disrupt their family forever, the judge noted.

Considering the “cumulative facts and circumstances” and the accused have no past criminal record, justice Pathak ordered, “Keeping this spirit, this court intends to inject ‘LIFE’ into this ‘FILE’ in the interest of justice.” And, quashed the FIR after the man, who had filed a habeas corpus petition requesting the release of his wife from the shelter home after she attained majority age on August 2, 2023.