Mumbai: After finding that the woman filed a police complaint against the accused only because he ended their five-year relationship, a magistrate’s court this week acquitted a 35-year-old south Mumbai man who faced 11 years of litigation after being accused of stalking, sending obscene messages, and threatening to unlawfully transmit private photographs of his former girlfriend. While the prosecution claimed the man obtained the complainant’s photographs without her knowledge, the woman stated in evidence that the photographs were clicked by her and sent to the man during the relationship.“This fact clearly goes to show that, the accused did not obtain objectionable photos of the informant without her knowledge, but crystalises that, the informant had sent it, when she was in love-ship with the accused,” the magistrate noted. The magistrate further noted that the complainant admitted that the two dated for about five years and that the man never misbehaved with her during that period. “…the relationship between the informant and the accused which broke after five years of dating has led to this prosecution,” the magistrate said. The prosecution alleged that the man and the complainant had known each other since childhood, studied together and were in a relationship.According to the prosecution, after the complainant became engaged to another person in Oct 2013, the man allegedly threatened to expose private photographs, contacted the fiancé, and later sent abusive and threatening messages along with photographs.The court noted that the chargesheet was filed before receipt of the forensic laboratory report. “It is also clear that, the mobile phone from which messages were sent does not belong to the accused, but it belongs to one Akshay Rathod.”
