Crime and Consent

In a recent judgment in Achey Lal vs State Govt of NCT Delhi, the Delhi High Court on October 30 set aside the conviction of the appellant for rape and murder. What has provoked discussion are the observations, inferences and conclusions of the court. Briefly, the facts as reported in the judgment are: on December 31 2010, a house maid, aged about 65-70 years, was found dead, with her clothes disheveled to expose her body. The accused, Achey Lal, 45 years old, was present in the room in an intoxicated condition. The husband of the deceased deposed that the accused had come at 8 am that day to his house with a quarter bottle of alcohol and when it finished, the husband left, while the accused stayed on with his deceased wife. The cause of death, according to the doctor who conducted the post mortem, “was asphyxia due to aspiration of gastric contents consequent upon forceful sexual intercourse, which was sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature”. During cross-examination, the doctor specifically denied that the deceased woman could have choked to death due to some self-natural occurrence triggered by sleeping in a position that the food contents entered her bronchiole. Nor could this be a result of overeating.