india

Updated: May 29, 2019 09:57 IST

A national-level basketball player has been booked by Rohtak police on orders of a local court for allegedly filing multiple false rape cases against men in order to extort money from them. The accused, a BA second year student at a college in Rohtak, had filed a rape case against a national-level kabaddi player in April earlier this year.

She had alleged that she came in contact with the kabaddi player while practising at Rajiv Gandhi Sports Stadium in Rohtak. She said the man promised to marry her and maintained physical relations with her. Later, he backtracked on his promise, she said in her complaint, adding that he threatened to make her intimate pictures viral if she complained to anyone.

Based on the complaint, the police had booked the kabaddi player under Sections 376 (2) N and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code and arrested him.

On May 10, when the kabaddi player filed his bail plea, the complainant, present in the court, told the additional sessions judge Rajinder Pal Goyal that she had no objection if he was granted bail as they had reached a compromise.

The judge then told the complainant that she could not reach a compromise in a rape case since the offence, “which is serious, heinous and cognisable”, was not compoundable as per law. To this, the complainant told the judge that she had lodged a case due to some misunderstanding.

The public prosecutor told the court that it had come to his knowledge that the complainant was a “professional girl” who had blackmailed several young men earlier in order to extort money from them. He also submitted a video in which the girl was bargaining with “her customers” while sitting in a car. In the said video, the girl was refusing to take the money because it was insufficient as per her demands.

The public prosecutor also cited an FIR previously registered against the woman for extorting Rs 1 lakh from a man, with whom she maintained physical relations and then demanded Rs 20 lakh in order to not register a false rape case against him.

Based on all the evidence, the court granted bail to the kabaddi player by keeping sureties worth Rs 1 lakh. It also observed that the complainant was a “blackmailer who is habitual in getting false rape cases registered in order to extort money”. “After getting the money, she either withdraws the case or endorses the bail of the accused,” the court observed in its order. It directed Rohtak SP to book the complainant and also educate all the SHOs to be vigilant of such fake cases.

On the court’s order, the Rohtak police on Tuesday booked the girl under Sections 182, 211 and 384 of the IPC.