Woman gets 7-year jail for false gangrape complaint

A Rohtak court on Thursday awarded seven-year jail to a woman who had filed a false case of gangrape and other offences against eight people of her family, including her husband.

The court of additional sessions judge Ritu YK Behl also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on the woman after her conviction under Sections 195 (giving false evidence to procure conviction of offence punishable for life imprisonment) and 211 (false charge of offence with intent to injure) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The woman, Meenakshi, 28, had in June 2010 filed a complaint alleging she was gangraped by a Rohtak resident and his two brother-in-laws after they gave her lift in their car.

She had further alleged that she was forcibly married to her rapist and repeatedly raped by him and his brother-in-laws after marriage.

However, the court, after examining 17 witnesses had acquitted the accused and his family members of all charges in 2015.

Finding the testimony of Meenakshi unreliable, the court had issued her a show-cause notice, to which her reply was found unsatisfactory. The court, therefore, directed that a complaint against her be made through the reader of the court.

During the trial, the court found her guilty of deliberately giving false evidence in order to convict her husband and family members, and awarded her a rigorous imprisonment for seven years.

Though the public prosecutor demanded harsher punishment and submitted that she deserved no leniency as such incidents are ever increasing where women use this modus operandi to harass men to extract financial gains, the court took a lenient view considering she was a young woman and a first time offender.