SC quashes rape case chargesheet against former Army officer; Complainant filed nine FIRs in 7 police stations

The Apex court quashed a chargesheet against a former Indian Army officer and said the Delhi High Court erred in its decision of not quashing the chargesheet.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday quashed a chargesheet against a former Army officer in an alleged rape case saying it was an “abuse of process of law”.

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran granted the relief to Capt. Rakesh Walia (retired) noting that the Delhi High Court erred in its decision of not quashing the chargesheet. Walia had challenged a Delhi High Court order dismissing his plea against the chargesheet.

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Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that the complainant’s testimony showed there was no offence and the FIR deserved to be quashed. Dubey said the woman ran a “sextortion” racket and filed multiple FIRs against different persons, blackmailing them for money. He submitted that a wrongful and malicious prosecution was initiated against his client.

Dubey said seven FIRs against nine different people, including the petitioner, at seven different police stations, were registered at her instance in the last eight years.
The high court in its order on July 31, 2024, observed the matter was before the trial court, which would consider the arguments on behalf of the petitioner, and pass an appropriate verdict. “Petitioner is a 63-year-old decorated officer of the Indian Army with critical medical ailments, who has also suffered a massive heart attack and has two stents implanted. He was diagnosed with cancer and clinically declared as a highly immune-compromised case,” his plea said.

The former Army officer, said the plea, was a “victim of an unscrupulous abuser” of law whose modus operandi was to extort the “hard-earned money of respectable citizens like him” by misusing the rape and molestation laws.

It came on record that during the COVID-19 lockdown somewhere between 2019 and 2020, the complainant got in touch with the petitioner claiming to be a social media influencer.

The call was regarding the promotion of his book titled “Broken Crayons Can Still Colour” on various social media platforms for a wider audience reach. According to the plea, the petitioner was interested in the complainant’s offer and decided to avail her service in June 2021, soon after the lockdown ended.

On December 29, 2021, the petitioner agreed to meet the complainant in person to discuss the modalities for the promotion of his autobiography and they met at the Chhattarpur Metro Station following which they drove towards Noida, the plea said.

The petitioner, however, claimed that after he had dropped her off in Noida, he received a call from the local police at around 6 pm, informing him about the woman’s complaint alleging he had drugged and assaulted her sexually at around 4.15 pm.