Booking hotel room and entering with man doesn’t imply consent for sex: Bombay High Court

In a case of alleged rape, the Bombay High Court at Goa has ruled that even if a girl has booked a hotel room along with a man and goes inside the room, it does not mean that she has given her consent for sexual intercourse.

A single-judge bench of the Bombay High Court led by Justice Bharat Deshpande quashed a March 2021 order passed by a Margao Trial Court, which discharged a man from rape charges, Live Law reported.

The Bombay High Court had passed the order on September 3 but made it available recently.

According to the trial court order, since the girl was involved in booking the hotel room, she “consented” to the sexual activity that took place in the room. Therefore, the accused man named, Gulsher Ahmed, cannot be charged with rape.

Justice Deshpande observed that the trial court judge “clearly committed an error” by making the observation that since the victim went inside the room, she consented to sexual intercourse, Live Law reported.

“Drawing such an inference is clearly against the settled proposition and specifically when the complaint was lodged immediately after the incident. Even if it is accepted that the victim went inside the room along with the accused, the same cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered as her consent for sexual intercourse,” Justice Deshpande said in the order.

“The action on the part of the victim immediately after coming out of the room and that too crying, calling the Police and lodging a complaint on that day itself shows that the overt act allegedly carried out in the room by the accused was not consensual,” the judge said.

The alleged crime occurred on March 3, 2020, when the accused promised the victim a private job abroad. He took the victim to a hotel in Margao allegedly on the pretext of meeting an agent for the said purpose, the report said.