The Allahabad High Court recently quashed the entire proceedings in a case against a man accused of raping a woman on the false promise of marriage. The bench of Justice Anish Kumar Gupta noted that the accused and the woman knew each other for more than 15 years and they had been in an active physical relationship with the approval of the parents of the complainant for more than eight years.
The bench underscored that when there is a longstanding relationship between the parties under the promise of marriage, it is to be seen as to whether such a promise of marriage was false at the inception or it was a subsequent breakdown of the relationship.
The court pointed out that in this case, since the relationship between the parties was of a consensual nature having the approval of the family, and the initial promise by the accused was not false, therefore, any subsequent breach of such a relationship would not amount to the offence of rape under section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The HC passed the order in an application filed under section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), seeking quashing of the charge sheet and cognisance/summoning order passed in 2020 along with entire proceedings against the applicant in a case registered under sections 419, 420, 376, 504, and 506 of the IPC.
According to the FIR, the woman and the accused met at a relative’s wedding. Thereafter, a relationship began between the two. The woman’s family was supportive of the relationship. Her relatives even sent the accused to Saudi Arabia by arranging funds. However, when he returned and the woman’s family asked him to marry her, he refused. Therefore, the woman alleged that the accused had physical relations with her between 2008 and 2018 under the promise of marriage against her will.
The allegations were opposed by the accused who claimed that the case was nothing but a misuse of the process of law as no offence as alleged against him could be said to have been made out.
The counsel for the accused relied upon the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Shivashankar @ Shiva vs State of Karnataka (2018), in which the apex court held that “it is, however, difficult to hold sexual intercourse, which has continued for eight years, as ‘rape’, especially in the face of the complainant’s own allegation that they lived together as man and wife”.
The high court said that it is a settled position of law that if there are materials to indicate that the criminal proceedings are initiated with mala fide intentions and an ulterior motive, it is the duty of the court to quash such proceedings in the exercise of powers under section 482 of CrPC.
The HC said that in section 375 of IPC, with punishment under section 376, the offence of rape is constituted when sexual intercourse is committed against the will of a woman and without her consent.
“A woman is said to consent only when she freely agrees to submit herself while in free and unconstrained possession of physical and moral power to act in a manner she wanted. Consent implies the exercise of free and untrammelled right to forbid or withhold what is being consented to,” added the single-judge bench.
While referring to the ruling of the apex court in State of HP vs Mango Ram (2000), where a three-judge bench had held that “consent for the purpose of section 375 of IPC requires voluntary participation not only after the exercise of intelligence based on the knowledge of significance and moral quality of the act but after having fully exercised the choice between resistance and assent whether there was consent or not is to be ascertained only careful perusal of relevant circumstances”, the high court held that in the present case, the victim and her family were well aware of the consequences of the relationship, and therefore, no offence of rape was made out against the accused.
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