Lawstreet Journal

"Surrender Can Never Be Construed as Consensual Acts of Sexual Intercourse",Kerala High Court Upholds Conviction of a 67-year old Accused of Raping Minor

Lawstreet Journal 7 Jul 2020 3:47am

Image courtesy: Lawstreet Journal Judiciary "Surrender Can Never Be Construed as Consensual Acts of Sexual Intercourse",Kerala High Court Upholds Conviction of a 67-year old Accused of Raping Minor

The Kerala High Court in Thankappan v. State of Kerala has observed that “Only those sexual intercourse which is welcomed could be construed as not violative of the rights of the victim and accepted as consensual.”

In the present case, the accused raped a 14-year-old minor girl who belonged to a Scheduled Caste on various subsequent days and impregnated her. The trial court observing that the prosecution failed to establish that the case falls under the definition of ‘rape’ as described under Section 375 of IPC, held the accused guilty under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code.

However, in an appeal before the Kerala High Court, the accused argued that that the victim has admitted that she used to go to the house of the accused as and when desired or required by the accused and had sex with him.

In deciding the appeal, Justice PB Suresh Kumar held that consent in the face of fear, duress, or compulsion could not be termed as 'lawful consent.' He said, “mere act of helpless resignation in the face of inevitable compulsion, quiescence, non-resistance, or passive giving in, when volitional faculty is either clouded by fear or vitiated by duress, cannot be deemed to be ‘consent’ as understood in law”

The judgment further states that “The consent, on the part of a woman as a defense to an allegation of rape, requires voluntary participation, not only after the exercise of intelligence, based on the knowledge, of the significance and moral quality of the act but after having freely exercised a… Continue Reading...


Tagged: Kerala HC  
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