No false rape case filed in 2014: Minister informs RS

 No false case of rape was registered for extortion in the capital last year, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

Chaudhary was replying to an MP’s question whether a large number of rape cases registered in Delhi last year were found false, and were registered only to extort money. Last year, 2,069 rapes were reported and 4,179 molestation cases were filed.

“No false rape case has been found registered for extorting money till date,” Chaudhary said in his written reply.

The reply comes less than a month after a Delhi court said that courts must deal firmly with women filing false rape complaints.

The court had made the remarks while directing lodging of a complaint against a woman who had registered a false rape case against a businessman at the behest of someone who wanted to settle scores with him. The court acquitted the businessman.

“False rape cases makes the crime graph shoot up, play havoc with the crime statistics and tend to trivialise the offence of rape and no sooner that the news of a person having been accused of rape spreads in the society, he is looked down upon by all and sundry,” the court had observed.

A PIL was also filed in Delhi High Court seeking directions to keep cases involving live-in relationships out of the purview of the crime of rape. But the petition was dismissed last week by a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice R S Endlaw,

The dismissed PIL had argued that the complaint lodged by a live-in partner against the other should be registered under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, not section 376 (rape).