Married woman can’t claim rape on false marriage promise: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Expressing concern over misuse of the criminal justice system by filing of rape cases when a consenting relationship turns sour, Supreme Court on Thursday held that a married woman who gets into a physical relationship with another man cannot file a rape case against him on the ground that she got into the sexual relationship on the promise of marriage.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said in such cases, a woman was not eligible to get married due to the subsistence of her marriage and she could not invoke the ground of false promise of marriage. It passed the order while quashing criminal proceedings against a lawyer on a complaint filed by a woman advocate alleging that he had raped her on the false promise of marriage.

The court said the complainant was already married when they were in a relationship and it was “a classic case of a consensual relationship turning acrimonious”.

“Therefore, even for the sake of argument, if the contention is accepted that there indeed was a false promise of marriage based on which the accused indulged in sexual activities, such a promise would not be legally enforceable or even capable of being acted upon as the victim herself was not eligible for marriage, neither on the date of the first alleged act of offence nor on any subsequent dates wherein the parties indulged in sexual activities, till the point of the date of registration of FIR. The said embargo arises from sub-clause (i) of Section 5 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which categorically prohibits marriage between two individuals if either of them have a living spouse,” the bench observed.

The bench said courts have to be extremely careful in identifying genuine rape cases by looking for the essential ingredients to constitute the said offence in view of the law being misused today.

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