The Karnataka High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against the owner of a homestay in Coorg who was accused of failing to inform authorities about the alleged rape of an American tourist at the property.
Justice M Nagaprasanna found that the charges against the owner could not survive scrutiny, holding that one set of provisions invoked against him belonged to a law that had already been repealed when the alleged offence occurred. The Court further held that the remaining charge did not impose a legal obligation on him to report the alleged sexual assault.
The incident was alleged to have taken place on April 12, 2026, when an American tourist staying at the Coorg homestay accused an employee of spiking her drink and sexually assaulting her.
The homestay owner and a taxi driver were also named in the case, apart from the employee accused of the assault.
The owner had been booked under Section 239 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which concerns failure to provide information about certain offences, along with provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946, for allegedly not reporting the incident.
The High Court noted that the Foreigners Act provisions could not be invoked because the statute had been repealed more than seven months before the alleged incident.
The Court stressed that criminal liability cannot be created by relying on a provision that was no longer in force when the alleged conduct occurred.
The Court also examined Section 239 of the BNS. It observed that the provision does not criminalise silence in every circumstance. Instead, liability arises where a person fails to provide information that the law specifically requires them to furnish.
Section 33 of the BNS identifies circumstances in which members of the public are legally required to report certain offences. The Court pointed out that rape and other sexual offences do not fall within that provision.
The Bench contrasted this with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, which expressly creates a mandatory reporting obligation in cases involving child sexual abuse.
According to the Court, Parliament’s decision to impose such a duty in the POCSO framework but not extend it generally to sexual offences could not be overlooked by the judiciary.
The Court consequently held that the homestay owner, as a private individual, was not under a statutory obligation to report the alleged rape.
While society may expect a person to inform the authorities about a serious crime, the Court made it clear that a moral expectation cannot by itself become the basis for criminal prosecution.
The circumstances of the case also weighed in the owner’s favour. The Court noted that he was not present at the homestay when the alleged assault occurred and had not been informed of the incident by the survivor.
The High Court therefore concluded that continuing the prosecution would amount to an abuse of the legal process and quashed the chargesheet against him.
The proceedings followed an earlier ruling in which the High Court had found that the owner’s arrest in the case was unlawful and directed the State to pay him ₹5 lakh as compensation for violation of his fundamental rights.
With the latest ruling, the criminal proceedings against the homestay owner have now been brought to an end.
