HC: Submission doesn’t mean consent for sex
Kochi: 20.11.2021
Consent for sex cannot be presumed just because a girl or a woman is in love with a man, the Kerala high court has held.
It also explained the difference between consent and submission and said helplessness in the face of inevitable compulsion can’t be considered consent.
“There is gulf of difference between consent and submission. Every consent involves a submission but the converse doesn’t follow. Helplessness in the face of inevitable compulsion cannot be considered to be consent as understood in law. Exercise of intelligence based on the knowledge of the significance and the moral effect of the act is required for consent. Merely for the reason that the girl was in love with the accused, it can’t be presumed that she had given consent for sexual intercourse,” Justice R Narayana Pisharadi said.
The court was considering an appeal filed by a 26-year-old man who forced his lover (17) to elope with him by threatening that he would commit suicide in front of her. He took her from Kayamkulam to Alappuzha and then to Bangalore. After raping her in a Bangalore hotel room, he took her to Goa and raped her there too. He had sold her gold ornaments on the way to make money. The girl had deposed that he had forcibly undressed her and raped her in Bangalore. After returning to Kayamkulam a week later, he gave Rs 50 to her and sent her away with a promise to marry her. By then, police had registered a missing case on the girl’s father’s complaint. It was later converted to a rape case. The HC upheld his conviction for rape. TNN
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