By Chris Williamson-
An Indian court has overturned a conviction for a film director accused of raping an American student.
The judge ruled that a “feeble no” can actually mean “yes” when it comes to sexual consent.
The shocking ruling in the case of Mamood Farooqui, convicted last year of raping a Columbia University graduate student in New Delhi in March 2015 sets a new precedent in Indian Law.
The student said she arrived at the home of Farooqui, co-director of the 2010 Bollywood film Peepli Live, to accompany him and his wife to a wedding. When the student arrived at the house, Farooqui was alone and drunk, and began to make advances toward her.
The film director allegedly ignored the student who repeatedly said “no” and restrained her arms from stopping him from removing her clothes.
“You were supposed to be my friend,” the student wrote him in an email after the event, as quoted by the Washington Post.
“Instead you manipulated me. You hurt me. I said no. I said no many times.”
Farooqui was sentenced to seven years in prison for the rape.
However, Delhi High Court Justice Ashutosh Kumar ruled that it was likely that Farooqui had “no idea” that the student wasn’t a willing participant in the act of oral sex, partly because she faked an orgasm – something the student has admitted to, saying she did so in order to end the encounter.
According to the judge, the student’s faking an orgasm sent Farooqui a message that she consented to the sex, “even though wrongly and mistakenly.”
“What [Farooqui] has been communicated is … that the [alleged victim] is OK with it and has participated in the act,” the judge stated in the ruling.
FEEBLE
“Instances of woman behavior are not unknown that a feeble ‘no’ may mean a ‘yes’. If the parties are strangers, the same theory may not be applied…. But same would not be the situation when parties are known to each other, are persons of letters and are intellectually/academically proficient, and if, in the past, there have been physical contacts. In such cases, it would be really difficult to decipher whether little or no resistance and a feeble ‘no,’ was actually a denial of consent.”
The judge went on to determine that “under such circumstances, benefit of the doubt is necessarily given to the appellant.” The judge’s decision is appalling because previous sexual contact does not imply consent in every case. No means no, and many bullies in this patriachial society struggle to accept this obvious fact . This judge foolishly suggests that little resistance from a woman may confuse whether she consents to a sexual act. Any resistance is resistance, only those short of sound thinking will fail to see this.
The judge’s decision was hailed by Farooqui’s wife, Anusha Rizvi, who said that “all the family members and friends of Mahmood Farooqui are relieved,” which ofcourse they would have been. The reality is that most reasonable citizens of any society knows he was guilty of rape, according to the facts known to the court. Sources in Delhi told the eye of media.com that it is not unknown for some judges to be subjected to bribery in the country, although there is no evidence to suggest this was the case in this instance.
The ruling is just so absurd that it raises serious questions of the understanding of the rule of law in Delhi.