The High Court of Delhi, while dealing with a revision petition by Delhi Police challenging an order by a trial court that discharged five women suspects in a kidnapping case, has said that gender-based assumption in favour of any woman suspect without substantive basis or valid grounds went against the core principles of the justice system.

The court, setting aside the order, sent the case back to the trial court & directed circulation of the judgment among all judicial officers & director (academics) of Delhi Judicial Academy for taking note of its contents.

The single-judge bench of Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma said the involvement of each individual in a criminal act has to be assessed independently, based on the statements recorded & evidence collected by the prosecution & placed on record before the court.

The Judge said, "the trial court in the present case has given no reason as to what led it to believe at this stage, to assume on its own, that the female members could not have participated in the commission of offence despite there being specific allegations levelled & specific roles attributed to them by the victim himself as recorded in theFIR & statement of the independent witnesses".

The trial court had framed charges against five men in the case & discharged five women accused on the ground that there was no evidence to prove they had instigated the male accused.

The order was challenged by the state in the high court.

"In this court's opinion, the learned trial court committed a grave error by discharging the accused persons on the basis of assumptions which were not permissible at the stage of framing of charges. It is crucial to note that the learned trial court has on its own presumed & assumed that when the "male members" were already beating the complainant, there was no occasion for the "lady members" to instigate them & to join them in beating the victim," the bench said, pulling up the trial court.

The HC further said that the presumption in favour of the women was made by the trial court at the stage of framing charges when its primary duty was only to see whether a prima facie case was made out or not.

It said that the chargesheet was filed against ten persons, including five women, & the trial court discharged the women.

However, the trial court asked "all lady accused persons" to furnish bail bonds under Section 437A of CrPC.

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