New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the plea of a rape survivor from Kottiyoor in Kerala to marry her assaulter, a defrocked priest.
The top court also dismissed a separate plea of the accused, Robin Vadakkumcherry, seeking bail on the ground that he wanted to marry the survivor, who was a minor at the time of rape and had given birth to his child.
Now an adult, she had moved the Supreme Court recently seeking its permission to marry Robin who is now undergoing 20 years imprisonment. The woman had sought that the former priest be released on bail.
A bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari told Robin, the high court has taken a decision consciously and it would not like to interfere with its finding.
The bench told her that she may knock on the door of trial court with her plea to marry Robin.
Advocate Amit George, appearing for the accused, said the high court had passed sweeping directions in the case with regard to the marriage, which is a fundamental right.
On asked about the age of the victim and his client, George replied that Robin is 49, while the rape survivor is around 25.
Marriage plea dismissed by High Court in February
Robin, who had initially tried to frame the woman's father, was found guilty by a POCSO court in 2019 after she turned hostile as she claimed that she had a consensual relationship with Robin.
On February 16, the Kerala High Court had dismissed Robin's plea seeking bail to marry her saying that it had no merit.
The high court had said in its order that the trial court's finding that the survivor was a minor at the time of rape is still in force and an appeal against the conviction of the accused was still pending before it.
Allowing the parties to get married while the trial court's finding is intact would mean granting judicial approval to the marriage, the high court reasoned.
On July 13, 2018, the apex court had termed as "very serious" the charges in the case involving the minor and the then Catholic priest.
It had refused to stay the trial of the case.
Besides Robin, police had then booked two doctors and a hospital administrator under the provisions of POCSO Act for allegedly covering up the crime, not reporting it to the police after they had come in contact with the minor who was raped and destruction of evidence.
The victim had given birth to the child at their hospital and was under their care.
