Delhi HC suspends IAF officer's 10-year sentence in rape case, asks AFT to expeditiously hear appeal

New Delhi, Sep 27 (PTI) The Delhi High Court has suspended the 10-year jail sentence of an Indian Air Force officer for the alleged offence of raping a woman colleague in 2021.

The high court set aside a March 2024 order of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), which had refused to suspend the officer's sentence, and granted him bail on furnishing two sureties of Rs 5 lakh each.

It asked the AFT to expeditiously take up the officer's appeal, which is pending since 2023, and dispose it of at an early date.

"In the present case, the petitioner does not have any antecedents and has already undergone 4 years out of a 10-year sentence.

"Given that his appeal was preferred in 2023 and is not likely to be disposed of in the near future, there exists a real and pertinent risk of completion of a substantial portion or the entirety of the sentence in detention while awaiting conclusion of the appeal," a bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla said in a September 25 judgment.

In these circumstances, the court said it was inclined to exercise discretionary power conferred upon it in favour of granting suspension of sentence to the petitioner.

The court's verdict came while allowing a plea by the officer challenging the March 2024 order of the AFT by which the tribunal had refused to suspend the sentence of rigorous imprisonment for ten years and release him on bail pending appeal.

Asccording to facts of the case, the petitioner was posted at the Air Force Administrative College at Coimbatore in 2021 and was undertaking a course when the incident took place.

In September 2021, a party took place in the mess which was attended by the petitioner, prosecutrix along with other coursemates.

Earlier that evening, the woman had suffered an injury and was given some medicines. It was the prosecution's case that the woman consumed alcohol along with the medication, rendering her in an incomprehensible state.

As she was not feeling well, she was escorted back to her room by two coursemates. Later that night, she was allegedly sexually assaulted but having been passed out, she could not recollect the events.

The man had claimed that the alleged incident was consensual in nature and the alleged confessions in the video were involuntary, made under duress and tailored to safeguard the reputation of the woman.

The high court said it was mindful that while conviction can be lawfully based on the sole testimony of the prosecutrix, however, in this case, the woman does not have personal knowledge of the alleged incident.

Her knowledge primarily came from the alleged video confession recorded by one prosecution witness along with the accounts of another witness it said.

Both the prosecution witnesses were also IAF officers.

"The reliability of these witnesses is disputed, inter alia, on the ground that prosecution witness 2 initially denied the video recording before COI but subsequently furnished it, and that prosecution witness 1, though present at the relevant time and having witnessed the petitioner and prosecutrix together, did not raise any alarm and only voiced her concerns the next day, allegedly as an afterthought," the court said.

It further said that the purported extra-judicial confessions are vehemently disputed by the petitioner, who asserted that they were made under duress and false statements were given to protect the reputation of the prosecutrix.

In these circumstances, the credibility and veracity of the extra-judicial confessions, witness testimonies and other evidence on record, has to be believed with a pinch of salt, while considering the application for suspension of execution of sentence, the court said. PTI SKV ZMN