Murderer destroys physical body of victim, but rapist degrades soul of helpless female: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court recently rejected the bail plea of a person accused of raping a woman and making a video of the incident which later went viral [Ayyub Khan @ Guddu v. State of UP]..Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh upheld an order of a special judge who had refused to grant the accused bail while taking note of the implications of the crime. "A murderer destroys the physical body of his victim, a rapist degrades the very soul of the helpless female," the single-judge observed..The judge discussed the increase in crimes against women while shedding light on the irony of celebrating women's rights in all spheres, without showing any concern for their honour. "It is a sad reflection on the attitude of indifference of the society towards the violation of human dignity of the victims of sex crimes," the Court said.A rapist, the Court said, not only violates the victim's privacy and personal integrity, but causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process..Along with the offence of rape, the accused was charged with intentional insult, criminal intimidation, and causing hurt by means of poison as well as offences under the Information Technology Act and Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act..It was the prosecution's case that the while the victim was waiting for conveyance, the accused stopped his truck and offered her a lift. When she boarded the truck, the accused offered her cold drink. After consuming the drink, she lost consciousness. It was alleged that following this, the accused took her to a lonely place, committed rape, made a video and abused her husband using casteist slurs.The State counsel also brought on record a CD of the victim's viral video..The accused denied all allegations, claiming the accusations to be false, and levelled in order to extract money from him. It was also argued that there was an unexplained delay in registering the First Information Report (FIR)..The Court, however, took into consideration a catena of judgements passed by the Supreme Court laying down that a mere delay in lodging the FIR was no ground to doubt the prosecution's case..On discussing precedent, the Court found that there were no good grounds to allow the bail application. "Considering the overall facts and circumstances of the case as well as keeping in view the submissions advanced on behalf of parties, gravity of offence, role assigned to appellant, severity of punishment, I do not find any good ground to release the appellant on bail", the order said..The appellant was represented by advocate Rajesh Kumar Pandey. Advocates Rabindra Kumar Singh and Prashant Kumar Singh represented the State, while advocates Ravi Prakash and Arvind Singh represented opposite party..[Read Order]