NEW DELHI: A man who was sentenced to 30 years rigorous imprisonment in 2014 for repeatedly raping a married woman was set free by Delhi high court on Monday after it found no evidence of forcible sex. The court stated that there was evidence of a sexual relationship, but rejected the allegation of the woman that she was kidnapped and raped for nine months daily while being confined to a small flat.

The court hinted that it might be a case of consensual sex when it discovered that the arrears of rent for the flat where the woman was confined were paid by her husband.

He did not even report a missing complaint after his wife was kidnapped from a moving train in 2012, the court exclaimed.

Moreover, what surprised the bench further was that during the period of her alleged trauma, the woman accompanied the accused to buy a TV set of her choice and even visited a doctor regularly.

Justice C Hari Shankar took a dim view of the lack of any attempt by the police or the trial court to fill the obvious gaps in the woman's story, which resulted in the accused being jailed for almost five years on trumped-up charges.

"Viewed any which way, the allegation of the accused having continuously raped her for over nine months (from June 15, 2012 till March 22, 2013), three to four times daily, cannot, on the facts of the present case, be believed. The case bristles with improbabilities and, even, impossibilities," the court observed.

Punching holes in the woman's story, the high court bench expressed disbelief that "in an overcrowded general class compartment of a train running between Kanpur and Rae Bareli, the accused managed to render the woman unconscious in the toilet with a number of persons standing outside, and in some mysterious and inconceivable manner, transport her to his house in Delhi and lock her in a room, taking care that she remained unconscious throughout and regained consciousness only after she was locked in the room."

The other loopholes in the case convinced the court that the accused had been falsely charged with rape and reversed the sessions court verdict.

Citing the woman's testimony, the court said she used to go out with the accused to the extent that when the television set had to be changed, it was she who chose the new one and the man even bought her new clothes of his choice. "When the woman fell ill, the accused took her to the doctor. All this time, however, no one ever got to know that she was being subjected to daily unwelcome sexual assault," the court said.

The high court bench even highlighted the evidence that when the woman later returned to the house to collect her belongings where she was allegedly raped, her husband paid the landlord Rs 3,200 as arrears. "This remains totally unexplained. The admission of the woman that her husband paid the arrears indicates that, contrary to her version, she was not alien to the room or the house," it noted.