Rape law misuse issue of ‘profound concern’: SC

FLagging a troubling trend, the sublime margaret court on th said that invoking violate charges in the wake of failed consensual relationships not only amounts to a misuse of the criminal justice machinery but is also a matter of “profound concern” for a judiciary already weighed down by heavy pendency.A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan held that not every breach of a promise to marry amounts to rape, underlining that the penal offence of rape is made out only where the promise of marriage was made solely to obtain sexual consent, without any intention of fulfilling it from the very inception, and where such a false promise had a direct bearing on the woman’s consent.Quashing criminal proceedings against a Chhattisgarh advocate accused of repeatedly raping a married woman colleague on the false promise of marriage, the court cautioned that criminal law, particularly the offence of rape, cannot be invoked to settle personal scores after relationships turn acrimonious.The court set aside a 2025 Chhattisgarh High Court order that had refused to quash the case, noting that the allegations disclosed a consensual relationship between two educated adults that later broke down, rather than sexual exploitation through deception.The complainant, a 33-year-old advocate and a married mother with a pending divorce petition, had alleged that the accused established a physical relationship with her from September 2022 on the assurance of marriage, which continued until January 2025. She claimed she became pregnant during the relationship and was forced to undergo an abortion. Following a confrontation with the accused’s family, she lodged an FIR in February 2025 under Section 376(2)(n) of the IPC, which deals with repeated rape on the same woman.Quashing the criminal proceedings against the accused, the Supreme Court underscored a crucial legal impossibility at the heart of the allegations. The bench noted that the complainant was legally married throughout the period of the alleged relationship, as her divorce proceedings were still pending. Any promise of marriage made to a woman with a subsisting marriage was therefore void from its inception under Section 5(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which prohibits bigamous marriages. Senior counsel Sanjay R Hegde argued the accused.“The law prohibits bigamous unions and therefore disallows parties from entering into a second marriage during the subsistence of their first marriage,” observed the court, adding that it was difficult to accept that the complainant, herself an advocate, was unaware of this settled legal position while claiming she was induced into the relationship on the pretext of marriage.On a close reading of the allegations, the bench noted that the complainant had disclosed her marital status to the accused at the very outset. In such circumstances, the court held, she could not simultaneously claim that she was deceived by a false promise of marriage, as the two assertions were “antagonistic and antithetical” to each other.The judgment placed strong reliance on recent precedents, including Prashant v. State of NCT of Delhi and Samadhan v. State of Maharashtra, where the Supreme Court had cautioned against criminalising failed relationships. The bench reiterated that “a mere break-up of a relationship between a consenting couple cannot result in the initiation of criminal proceedings.”Emphasising that rape is among the gravest offences under criminal law, the court warned that converting every soured relationship into a rape allegation trivialises the seriousness of the offence, inflicts irreparable stigma on the accused, and causes grave injustice. Such cases, it said, go beyond personal discord and burden an already overstrained criminal justice system.Calling for heightened judicial caution, the bench stressed that courts must carefully distinguish genuine cases of sexual violence and coercion from litigation arising out of consensual relationships that later turn bitter. “Such genuine cases that deserve prosecution must be clearly demarcated from cases of consensual relationships between consenting adults going acrimonious on account of dispute, disagreement, or a subsequent change of mind,” it said.