In a significant ruling, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court recently ruled that even if a woman has ‘loose’ character, it does not allow any man to rape her. The HC objected to the contention of a 32-year-old rape convict, who attempted to cast aspersions of the character of the victim. A single-judge bench of Justice Manish Pitale accordingly dismissed the criminal appeal filed by Ramkrishna Wagh, convicted by a trial court in Akola district, for raping his minor niece. Justice Pitale said, “The contention raised by Wagh through his defence witness, appears to be an attempt to cause aspersions on the character of the victim girl. It is claimed by the defence witness that her estranged husband had an illicit relationship with the victim. This witness has only been brought up by Wagh to create an adverse opinion about the victim and her character. “Thus, even if the victim was assumed to be of a loose character, it could not be said that any man or Wagh, in particular, had a right to rape her or to have sexual intercourse with her,” Justice Pitale ruled. According to the prosecution’s case, Wagh was the maternal uncle (mother’s brother) of the victim and was caught red-handed by the father of the victim in October 2003, while he was raping the victim. The father then went to bring back the victim’s mother, who was at her maternal house, at the relevant time. The victim’s parents lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against Wagh on the second day of the incident. To defend himself, Wagh used this ‘one day delay’ to argue that the case was an ‘afterthought’ as the victim’s father wanted to settle personal scores. Trashing this contention, Justice Pitale said, “In this situation, father of the victim could be expected to first bring the incident to the notice of his wife as it pertained to an extremely serious allegation against her own brother and, therefore, it does not appear to be unnatural for the father to have first informed his wife and then approached the police for lodging the complaint. Thus, on this count, it could not be said that the delay in registration of the FIR was fatal to the case of the prosecution.” The bench accordingly dismissed Wagh’s appeal and directed him to surrender before the Borgaon Manju police station, Akola, at the earliest.