MUMBAI: Twenty-six years after a man was accused of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old girl from Goregaon, a sessions court acquitted him of all charges. The man, over 50 now, was absconding for years and was found only last year.

Acquitting him, judge U S Joshi Phalke said, “Evidence of the investigating officer shows that the victim got married to the accused and the statement of the Kazi who performed the marriage is also recorded. There was consent by the girl for sexual relations.”

The FIR in the case was registered in 1986. In the complaint filed against the accused, Mohammed Mulani, the woman’s father, alleged that she was a minor when she first met him about two years before the incident. Mulani, a native of Satara, had come to visit his sister in Goregaon. The prosecution said that in May 1986, Mulani threatened her and forcibly took her to Satara where she was made to stay with him for four months.

After that, she was taken to Karad, where she stayed for another two months. It was further alleged that Mulani threatened the girl and had sexual relations with her. The girl then gave her father’s phone number to a man who called him up and alerted him about her whereabouts. The prosecution said that the father then went to Karad and brought back the girl.

