mumbai

Updated: Nov 09, 2017 13:44 IST

A sessions court has acquitted a 28-year-old man of rape charges after the complainant, now his wife, admitted that she had filed the police complaint in a fit of anger after he had gone incommunicado for a week.

The woman told the court that they had sorted out their differences since then and are now happily married with a child.

In 2016, the Shivaji Nagar police had booked Mohmad Faizan Khan after his girlfriend filed a complaint alleging that he had raped her under the pretext of marriage.

The couple had met in 2011 at a wedding, fallen in love, and had informed their parents. In the meantime, in 2014, Khan took a rented apartment in the city, where the couple started meeting and got into a sexual relationship. In August 2015, the woman said she got pregnant, but terminated the pregnancy after Khan asked her to. In early 2016, Khan went to his native place in Uttar Pradesh to meet his parents for a week. She alleged that during his stay there, he went incommunicado, which upset her, and she went to the police.

A year after the case came up for trial, when she was summoned to depose before court, she did not support the prosecutor’s case and during cross-examination denied that Khan had forced himself on her and admitted that he had never refused to marry her. She added that as soon as Khan returned to the city, he had reached out to her and they had settled their differences.

Based on this testimony, the court acquitted Khan last week.