New Delhi, Feb. 23 -- The Bombay High Court granted bail to a man arrested for allegedly raping a minor girl in 2019, saying she had voluntarily stayed with him and had "consensual encounter". The high court passed the order on February 17 in the bail application of the accused.

The man, then 19-year-old, was arrested by the police in 2019 for allegedly raping and kidnapping of the girl, then aged 14.

"No doubt that the girl was a minor. However, the facts of the present case indicate that she had sufficient knowledge and capacity to know the full impact of her actions and what she was doing and had only thereafter voluntarily joined and stayed with the applicant for four days," the single-judge bench of Justice Milind N Jadhav said in ...