Karnataka High Court has made a very important comment while hearing a rape case. The court has said that the law does not consider heartbreak as a crime. The court also said that if marriage is refused after consensual relations, then it is sad, but it cannot be considered as rape.
According to the report of Live Law, the court was hearing a petition in which a person had demanded to cancel the FIR lodged against him by the woman under Sections 69 and 115 (2) of the Indian Justice Code, 2023. In the FIR, the woman has accused the petitioner of having a relationship with her by making a false promise of marriage.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna, Karnataka High Court judge, said, ‘Where two adults voluntarily enter into consensual physical relations for a long period of time, if the man thereafter refuses to marry the woman, no matter how deplorable that act is, that relationship alone cannot be converted into the offense of rape under Section 376 of the IPC.’
The court also said in the order that after reading the complaint completely, there is no mention of coercion, deception from the beginning or use of force. The complaint talks about a live-in relationship lasting two years, shared domestic life and consensual relations.
The court said that both of them lived together for two years and what happened after that is not an allegation of violence but an allegation of betrayal, hence it is not a case of having a physical relationship by deceiving them from the beginning. It is an established principle of law that law does not consider heartbreak as a crime.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna said that a promise of marriage is considered false when it is proved that the promise was merely a deceit or a fraudulent ploy, which was never intended to be fulfilled. The court said that later change of mind or lack of coordination, opposition from family or mere hesitation in getting married – these things cannot be considered as criminal intention at the beginning of the relationship.
The court, while quashing the complaint against the petitioner, said that the criminal justice system should not be weaponized when relationships fail. The petitioner had met the woman in Ireland, both of whom had gone there to study. Later their friendship turned into love and both of them decided to live-in.
The woman said in the FIR that both of them lived in live-in relationship for a long time and during this time they had physical relations. The woman was already married and also had a child. However, the woman says that her divorce case was already going on with her husband. Later, the woman’s relationship with the petitioner deteriorated and on her return to India, she filed a case against the petitioner for having an affair on the pretext of marriage.
