‘No’ has to be emphatic, says court, acquits filmmaker of rape
A feeble ‘no’ to sexual advances may mean a ‘yes’, said the Delhi High Court while acquitting Peepli Live co-director Mahmood Farooqui in a rape case brought against him by a US researcher.
Giving the benefit of doubt to Farooqui, who had appealed against the seven-year jail term awarded to him by a trial court for sexually assaulting the 30-year-old on March 28, 2015 at his south Delhi home, Justice Ashutosh Kumar said, “It remains in doubt as to whether such an incident, as has been narrated by the prosecutrix, took place and if at all it had taken place, it was without the consent/will of the prosecutrix, whether the appellant could discern/understand the same.”
The court also said that in today’s time, a ‘no’ has to be emphatic, not ambiguous, and has to be “expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions”. But in Farooqui’s case, it was unclear whether he was told “that there was no consent of the prosecutrix”, who was also his friend.
“In an act of passion, actuated by libido, there could be myriad circumstances which can surround a consent and it may not necessarily always mean yes in case of yes or no in case of no. …read more