NEW DELHI: A trial court has acquitted a man of raping a woman saying physical relations between them were maintained with the girl’s consent. “The fact that she stayed with the accused, fully knowing that he was staying alone and used to cook meals for him and they both lived as husband and wife, do bring us to the conclusion that she consented to physical relations,” the court said.

Additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna, however, convicted the man of wrongfully restraining and beating the woman. “The bare fact the prosecutrix knew that the accused is a married man and, (knowing she cannot marry him) yet continued to stay with him, making physical relations and not filing any police complaint shows that she had consented to such relations.” The accused was arrested after the woman, a cook, alleged that since September 2011, while she was living with him at his south Delhi flat, she was raped on several occasions by the accused on the assurance of getting her employed soon.

