New Delhi: Six separate cases of rape and criminal intimidation in a span of six years, with detailed descriptions of abuse and suffering. All FIRs lodged in the same city, three against former boyfriends, one against a “husband”.
The complainant, a 27-year-old woman from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, is now herself facing charges of extortion and criminal intimidation, which she has denied.
In her complaints filed against three of the men, the woman’s accusations included rape on the “pretext of marriage”, forced unnatural sex, taking her videos and photographs without consent, and threats to leak those online.
While one FIR was registered in February 2016, two were lodged in March and April 2019, another two in February and October 2021, and one in March this year. All in Jabalpur.
Two of the accused men were arrested, while one managed to get a stay from the Supreme Court. The fourth accused got anticipatory bail from a lower court, ThePrint has learnt.
The woman is now being probed, after a fifth man — against whom she had filed a complaint of rape but a case was not registered — approached the Jabalpur district court for relief. He alleged that the woman was not only threatening to implicate him in a case of rape, but also asking for money.
One of the four accused men then approached the court with similar claims. The Jabalpur district court then scrutinised all evidence, recorded statements and ordered that a case under IPC sections for extortion and criminal intimidation be registered against the woman. ThePrint has a copy of the court order.
She has now been summoned to the court on 22 September. If she does not appear, an arrest warrant will be issued against her.
“The woman got over five cases of rape registered against different men over a period of time. The men have alleged that she was extorting money. The court has taken cognisance of the complaint and has registered a case. The court will be looking into this case,” Jabalpur Superintendent of Police Siddharth Bahuguna told ThePrint.
When ThePrint contacted the woman, she dismissed the allegations as “baseless”. She said that she loved each of the men and they all “broke her trust”, and denied asking for money from any of them.
The matter was highlighted after filmmaker-activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj submitted a formal complaint to Madhya Police Director General of Police (DGP) Sudhir Saxena on 9 May, asking the police to look into the cases.
She also wrote to the Haryana State Commission for Women, which forwarded her complaint to the DGP in June. However, no action was taken, according to Bhardwaj.
“I met the aggrieved families in May and I was told that the woman threatened and implicated them in these cases. She openly declares that the police cannot do anything against her because she is a woman. She knows how to misuse the rape laws, and these families of men have been tortured and harassed immensely,” Bhardwaj told ThePrint.
“After exposing her, I have been receiving calls from more men, who know people victimised by this woman. Maybe there are many more men, who fell prey to her conspiracy,” she added.
Bhardwaj also highlighted a 2021 case of a 20-year-old Delhi University student from Gurugram, who, in a span of nearly 14 months, filed rape cases against seven men at seven police stations. She was later arrested on charges of extortion.
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Similarity in FIRs
Three of the six FIRs, accessed by ThePrint, bear similarities.
In the FIRs, the woman alleges that she was promised marriage and raped on that pretext, filmed and then threatened. While the alleged offence took place in a car in one case, it happened inside a hotel room in the other two case.
In the case filed in February 2021 under IPC sections for unnatural sex, criminal intimidation, rape, and causing hurt, the woman alleged that she had known the accused for a year and the crime happened when he took her out for a drive.
“On 1 February, he took me for a drive and started drinking and smoking inside the car after parking next to a hotel. I started feeling sick and asked him to take me home, but he insisted that we take a room in the hotel,” she alleged in her complaint.
“I went inside the room to rest, and he entered with a bottle of alcohol and a Bluetooth speaker and started playing songs loudly. When I got up to leave, he slapped and raped me. He also clicked my pictures and threatened to make them viral,” the FIR read.
In the case registered on 7 October last year, again under IPC sections for rape, unnatural sex, criminal intimidation, at the women’s police station of Jabalpur, the woman made similar allegations.
The rape, she claimed, took place inside a hotel room in Kanpur. In the FIR, she alleged that the man — with whom she had gone out — barged into her hotel room after a party and raped her. On facing resistance, she claimed, the man twisted her hand.
“For two days, he kept me inside the room and raped me and also recorded videos, which he threatened to make viral,” she alleged in her complaint.
In the case registered on 23 March this year under the same sections, she alleged that the third accused raped her several times over two months and threatened to kill her family members if she approached the police.
She alleged that he first raped her on 28 February in his car. They both then went on a trip together to a nearby village, she further claimed, where he again raped her in a hotel room, forcing her to have unnatural sex, as well as shot videos of her.
‘Husband’ faces similar charges
The remaining three FIRs are against the same man, who is purportedly her husband.
While the first FIR was registered on 28 February 2016 at the Ghamapur police station under sections for rape and causing hurt, the second was lodged on 8 March 2019 for ‘domestic violence’, ‘rape’, ‘causing hurt’ and ‘uttering obscene words’. The third was registered a little after a month, on 4 April, for criminal intimidation, at the same police station.
According to the police, the first case was closed after the two parties reached a “compromise” and the woman “retracted” her complaint.
“She married the person she had filed a case against and then after a few years, she filed a case of rape and domestic violence,” Bhardwaj, who has spoken to the accused in the case, told ThePrint.
The woman, however, said that the two were never married: “He just put on a jai mala as a ceremony, but we never actually got married. He got a fake certificate of marriage made, just to wriggle out of the rape case. I have evidence to show that we never were married.”
‘Questioned for raising my voice’
The woman claimed that the FIRs against all the men were “genuine”.
“All this has happened to me time and again. My problem is that I trust people easily. All of them promised to marry me and then broke my heart, raped me, and took advantage of me. But I was strong enough to take action. I am fighting all these cases, despite my close ones dissuading me from doing so. And now, I am being questioned for raising my voice? What sort of justice is this?” she asked.
The 27-year-old further that she would fight till the end. “The court will know who is at fault. Questioning a woman, who has had the courage to come forward and register complaints against these men, is no less than a crime. Only I know what I have gone through,” she told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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