Says Court Has Highest Respect For Womanhood
WEB DESK
Reacting to the controversy over a ruling during the bail hearing in a rape case, Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde on Monday asserted that the remarks were misreported. Denying asking rapists to marry survivors in the ruling, Bobde said that this court has always have given the largest respect to women.
“Even in that hearing, we never gave a suggestion that you should marry. We had asked, are you going to marry”, Live Law quoted the CJI as saying. This comes days after two judgments made by the apex court stoked huge controversy. Notably, both the observations were made by the bench headed by CJI Bobde.
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Earlier this month, a controversy erupted after a bench headed by CJI asked a 23-year-old man, who has been accused of raping a minor girl, whether he will marry the victim. After a brief hearing in the matter, the bench which also comprises Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian declined to entertain the petitioner’s plea seeking bail and gave him the liberty to seek regular bail. The top court also granted protection from arrest to the petitioner for four weeks.
The girl had alleged that when she was 16 years old, the petitioner, who was her distant relative, had raped her. The girl alleged that initially the petitioner’s mother had agreed to the marriage after she turns major and also executed a notarised undertaking for it. But the petitioner’s mother later refused, she alleged.
The girl lodged an FIR against the petitioner in 2019 under Sections 376, 417, 506 of the IPC and under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.