When a woman impersonated the rape survivor to facilitate acquittal of her father

Baran, Rajasthan: On January 11, 2011, a rape accused reached his village in Baran district of Rajasthan for celebrations, after the Additional District and Sessions Judge of the fast track court acquitted him. The rape survivor, a Dalit woman who is the daughter-in-law of the accused, did not know about his acquittal until March 26, 2014, when she reached her husband's village from her brother's house.

A shocked victim approached the district and session court of Baran the same day, and figured out that someone else had appeared posing as her to record her statement and that she had been declared hostile in the court. 

The then Additional District Judge, Kishan Chand Gujjar, was transferred to the district and session court of Baran in March 2014 and had just joined duty when the woman appeared in the court, and said, “How have you bailed the accused when the High Court of Rajasthan directed that bail will be only after the recording of the statement of the victim?”

Now retired, Gujjar recalled that he called for the file and found that the statement of the victim had already been recorded in the court, and she had turned hostile, leading to the court's acquittal of the accused. “The court already passed the orders, and I could not revert or do anything in that matter. Still, I called the deputy superintendent of police and sought a forensic lab test of the thumb impression taken when the statement of the ‘victim’ was recorded, to match that of the real victim,” Gujjar told 101Reporters.

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) report revealed that the thumb impression was over-inked and contained two impressions, making it impossible to determine whether the thumb impression was that of the victim or not. “This was a challenging situation for me as the victim took an oath on her son that she had never come to record her statement in the court,” he added. The judge called the investigating officer, who was of deputy SP rank, and he said that he had come to know that there was a compromise between the parties, and the victim had taken money from the accused.

‘Justice was not done in the court’

“It was hard on me because by seeing the victim, I knew she was speaking the truth, but the law says that once the verdict is out, the same court cannot do anything.” He added, “Then I sent the case for reference to the High Court of Rajasthan with my observation, because I felt that justice was not done in the court.”

The rape survivor had not hired any lawyer or taken help from legal aid as the Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) was contesting the case on the state's behalf. After the incident, the husband of the rape survivor did not help her. So she went to the house of her brother Umeed Singh (42), who helped her lodge a complaint of rape at Kasba Thana Police Station in Baran district on August 25, 2010.

When the case reached the Jaipur Bench of the Rajasthan HC, Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma was also astonished, but the challenge arose as to how the court could identify the rape victim recording her statement.

Later, on September 16, 2015, the HC quashed the orders that acquitted the accused and directed a retrial. It also issued an advisory for the identification of victims coming to courts for recording their statements. 

“In all the cases relating to Section 376 or 354 IPC, the statement of the prosecutrix will be recorded by the courts below only after due certification by the medical doctor concerned, who examines the prosecutrix, or the I.O. concerned. However, it is made clear that this direction will not be applicable in the cases where the statement of the prosecutrix has already been recorded and the trial is going on,” the HC directed. 

Plugging the loophole

Before this judgment, the APP used to identify the victim who was giving a statement in the court. The process was that the court would issue a summons, which the police would serve to the witness, who would then have to approach the APP. In this particular case, APP Aslam Bharti had reasoned that it was the husband of the rape survivor who had approached him with the court summons and sought a date to record the rape survivor's statement in the court. So, he naturally believed that it was the real rape survivor.

Kishan Chand Gujjar said that he gave the order to arrest the accused and take him into judicial custody until the statement of the victim was recorded. The retrial came up, and the victim came to the court and registered her statement, which was corroborated by the medical report of the doctors and the DNA report collected at the place of the crime. “Looking at the evidence, I sentenced him to seven years in jail,” Gujjar said. 

Gujjar said that he further directed the investigation officer of the case to file an FIR for personification and perjury. He also directed that the thumb impression of every woman belonging to the family of the accused be taken to check who had come to give evidence in court during the previous trial. In any witness statement, a thumb impression is taken only of illiterate witnesses. The literate people would sign the statement.

“I personally requested the FSL team to check whose thumb impression matched the one on the statement previously taken in court.” And there was this twist in the whole affair. The thumb impression was that of the daughter of the accused.

The case starkly illustrates how easily the system can be manipulated when safeguards are weak — a survivor’s voice was silenced through impersonation, officials relied on assumptions, and justice was derailed for years. It took the persistence of the victim, the intervention of an alert judge, and a landmark directive from the High Court to plug the loophole. Yet, the episode is a reminder that in the absence of strict verification and accountability, the justice process itself can be weaponised against those it is meant to protect.

(Kshitiz Gaur is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) 

This story has been produced by 101Reporters, an independent news agency with a network of 3,000+ freelance journalists across the country, in collaboration with Crime & Punishment, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.