Where’s the international clamor about a “false rape” crisis in India?
Three days ago, the Saravanampatti police went into a tizzy as they received information that a woman was ‘raped’ by two men in a women’s hostel room in the area. The woman said she did not prefer making a complaint as it would shame her family and also threatened suicide if a complaint was filed.
But investigations have revealed that she had staged the drama as she was in love with a man since the age of 14. But her parents were against it. To put an end to her parents’ attempt to get her married to someone else, she claimed that she had been raped.”
Here are more examples of false rape accusations:
1.In 2013, out of 583 rape cases decided in Delhi courts, only 12 involved stranger rape.
More than half involved elopement and accusations by in-laws; in about a fifth, the plaintiffs turned hostile or didn’t show; and most of the rest was rape by acquaintances/neighbors, with a few by family members.
2.An alleged gang-rape in Dharmasala, widely circulated via social media, has no basis whatsoever. The alleged victim denies there was any rape and denies that the woman who spread the rumor was her sister, as she claimed.
The victim believes it was an attempt to slander her.
3. A 35 year old casual laborer in Mumbai, arrested for raping a 4-year old girl, was released after 21 months in jail, when it was found that the girl’s mother had coached her child to frame him, so that her husband would not have to repay the laborer for a loan of Rs. 400 (about $6-7).
4. A Delhi court acquitted a man charged with rape after the alleged victim married the man and it came out that the case was only filed to apply pressure on the man to marry her. The judge did not prosecute the woman to avoid destroying the marriage.
5. A 24-year-old management graduate in Delhi admitted to having filed a false rape case to pressure her live-in partner to marry her. She withdrew the case once the marriage took place.
6. A Delhi police chief stated at a conference that more than 60% of rape cases filed in the capital are false.
7. A gang of four men and a woman from the state of Haryana were arrested for conspiring to blackmail rich men whom they befriended. They extorted them with the threat of filing of rape charges.
8. More than one woman has had her father jailed on false rape charges because he would not let her continue to see her boyfriend.
9. A Delhi woman lodged a false rape case against a businessman on behalf of someone who had a score to settle with him.
10. After the Delhi gang-rape of 2013, acquittal rates shot up from 46% to 75% for the rest of the year and to 70% in 2014, implying that the greater part of cases filed were false.
11. A New Delhi outfit that counsels survivors of violence and trauma studied rape cases in which they were involved from 2003-2008. They found that almost 20% were outright false; another 25% were were motivated by hostility to the accused; another 25% were filed under pressure from family members; 15% were filed after consensual sex; and the rest defied categorization.
12. A frail 75-year-old man who had just lost his wife was jailed for 6 months for raping a 30 year-old maid, but released when the maid confessed that she had been put up to do it by a neighbor as a way of extorting him for his property.
13. A Delhi woman who had filed 11 cases of rape, stalking and other offenses was jailed for extortion and theft when one of her intended victims fought back.
14. DNA evidence and the alleged victim’s contradictory statements have led to the release of two accused rapists, a hotel-owner and his employee. The alleged victim had borrowed money from the hotel-owner and had filed the rape case against him because he’d asked for it back.
15. An Indian medical journal noted with alarm the rise of false rape cases after the Delhi gang-rape. It described the case of a nurse who claimed she’d been kidnapped from Chandigarh and gang-raped in a moving car but was found to have concocted the story to frame the husband of a woman she claims had had her arrested for allegedly injecting her with HIV.
16. A woman forced herself on her son’s 16-year-old friend after spiking his drink, video-taped the act, and black-mailed him with the threat of false-rape charges into having a relationship with her, according to charges filed by the boy. He cannot charge her with rape, because the Indian penal code does not include men among possible victims of rape.
17. A Delhi judge ordered the prosecution for perjury of a 20-year-old woman who falsely accused two men of gang-raping her, when they were documented to have been with their families.
18. Police and women’s advocates around India state that a high percentage of “rape” cases are “false promise” cases (breach-of-promise case) that are made after women have premarital sex or become pregnant before marriage, only to find that the men do not intend to marry them. The false rape charges are filed to pressure the men to marry them.
19. The 69-year-old head of a Brahmakumari ashram in Gwalior was accused of rape by a 33 year-old woman, who threatened to file a case if he did not give her 5 lakhs rupees (about $10,0000). When the man filed a false-rape case against her, it turned out that she had a history of extorting people with false rape charges and was duly arrested.
20. A woman was sentenced to 4 years in jail for a false rape case against her landlord, which she filed to avoid paying back a loan she and her husband had taken from him. The landlord spent 72 days in jail and then committed suicide, blaming his ordeal for his action.