The Chhattisgarh High Court has held that a person cannot be booked for kidnapping if a minor elopes with him voluntarily, reported Bar and Bench on Saturday.
With this, the court on Thursday acquitted a 24-year-old man who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act after a 15-year-old girl eloped with him in September 2022.
“There is no evidence on record that at any point of time the appellant solicited or persuaded the victim to leave her home forcefully,” a bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench.
The bench added: “The victim had voluntarily accompanied the appellant and remained with him without any resistance or complaint.”
The case against the man was registered in September 2022 when the girl’s father registered a complaint after she did not return from school.
The girl had eloped with the man to Raipur and then to Hyderabad. She then travelled with him to Andhra Pradesh’s Vijayawada and eventually reached Agrapalli.
They stayed together in Agrapalli for nearly a month.
Meanwhile, the police traced her based on her father’s complaint. In October 2023, a trial court sentenced the man to 20 years in jail.
He challenged the judgement before the High Court. During the...
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