Coerced consent is no consent: Gauhati High Court

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The Gauhati High Court has observed that consent obtained through coercion cannot be viewed as true consent by a court of law.

The High Court recently rejected an appeal filed by man who was sentenced by a lower court to undergo four years' rigorous imprisonment for abducting and sexually violating a minor schoolgirl for several days in 2009.

The appellant's counsel submitted before the court that the girl was not a minor at the time of the incident and, moreover, the girl consented to elope with the man on her way back from school.

The victim's testimony, however, contradicted this claim. She said that she was abducted and that the man, who was a married person with children of his own, had subsequently established sexual relations with her by threatening to kill her if she did not submit to his advances.

While dismissing the appeal for quashing of the lower court's verdict, the High Court observed: "An act of helplessness in the face of inevitable compulsions is not consent in law… it has been held that a woman has given consent only if she has freely agreed to submit herself, while in free and unconstrained possession of her physical and moral power to act in a manner she wanted. Consent implies the exercise of a free and untrammelled right to forbid or withhold what is being consented to, it always is a voluntary and conscious acceptance of what is proposed to be done by the another and concurred in by the former. An act of helplessness in the face of inevitable compulsions is not consent in law. More so, it is not necessary that there should be actual use of force. A threat of use of force is sufficient."

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