It’s hard to see what benefit a player would imagine they’re getting by such a tactic, since it just means their next handicap game will be even harder to win, due to their artificially inflated rank – and the more they do it, the harder it will become to win legitimately.
Could it be a legitimate tactic, though, where the opponent is ahead on territory but very close to timing out? In one sense, it would constitute punishment for their spending too long thinking about how to gain the lead they managed to create…