A man convicted of rape married the woman, an unwed mother, just before he was to surrender 10 years after the incident, causing a legal dilemma.

Swapan Chatterjee married 28-year-old Tumpa Ghosh within 72 hours of a division bench of Calcutta High Court upholding a trial court’s verdict against him. Although it wasn’t a legal ground for him to evade arrest, Tumpa’s lawyers intervened to “give the couple some time together”.

A month later, Swapan remains unofficially free — officially, he has been declared absconding — and Tumpa says she is enjoying being married to him. Their lawyers are preparing to move the Supreme Court to overturn Swapan’s sentence.

“The high court now has no jurisdiction in the case and cannot withdraw its own verdict. But for the sake of the newly married couple, the charges against the convict should be dropped immediately. So we have decided to approach the Supreme Court to find a solution,” said Rabishankar Chatterjee, the same lawyer who had previously argued for Swapan to be convicted of rape.

Swapan and Tumpa, residents of Titlan village in Burdwan, have known each other for a decade. According to the case diary, Tumpa discovered she was pregnant in 1998 and told her lover that they must marry immediately.

“But Swapan denied having a relationship with his lover, leave alone marry her. Tumpa then lodged a complaint at Kalna police station, accusing him of rape. Police arrested Swapan in August 1998 and Tumpa gave birth to a girl around that time,” said Uday Chatterjee, another lawyer who represented her in court.

Swapan was granted interim bail, but the Kalna sub-divisonal judicial magistrate’s court ordered a DNA test to ascertain whether he was the father of Tumpa’s baby. When the test report confirmed that he was the father, the trial court sentenced him to 10 years in prison on the charge of rape in 2003.

Swapan’s appeal against the verdict before the division bench of Justice D.P. Sengupta and Justice P.K. Deb was turned down last month. The judges asked him to surrender within 72 hours but instead of doing so, the youth decided to marry the girl he had spurned all along.

Tumpa told Metro over phone that she would like to withdraw the case. “Swapan and me married on July 8. We registered our marriage on August 8. We are staying happily.”

It’s a googly the apex court might find difficult to handle.