The Supreme Courtroom on Tuesday flagged a “worrying development” of criminalising long-term consensual relationships after they flip bitter.
A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and N Kotiswar Singh stated whereas quashing an FIR in opposition to a person accused of rape by a lady who was in a relationship with him for over 9 years.
“It’s evident from the big variety of instances determined by this courtroom coping with comparable issues as mentioned above that there’s a worrying development that consensual relationships happening for extended durations, upon turning bitter, have been sought to be criminalised by invoking felony jurisprudence,” the courtroom stated.
Writing for the bench, Justice Singh stated, “If criminality is to be hooked up to such extended bodily relationship at a really belated stage, it may well result in severe penalties. It should open the scope for imputing criminality to such long run relationships after turning bitter, as such an allegation will be made even at a belated stage to tug an individual within the juggernaut of stringent felony course of. There’s all the time a hazard of attributing felony intent to an in any other case disturbed civil relationship of which the courtroom should even be aware.”
The appellant had approached the SC after the Bombay Excessive Courtroom refused to quash the rape FIR in opposition to him.
Showing for him, Advocate Mrunal Dattatraya Buva submitted that the appellant and the complainant have been in a relationship since they met for the primary time in 2008, till 2017. She stated it will be inconceivable that he would pressure himself upon the grievance for thus a few years with out there being any protest or grievance from her and that the allegation of rape was concocted solely after he refused to supply any additional monetary help to her or succumb to her demand of marrying her.
Agreeing, the SC stated “if a person is accused of getting sexual relationship by making a false promise of marriage and if he’s to be held criminally liable, any such bodily relationship have to be traceable on to the false promise made and never certified by different circumstances or consideration. A lady could have causes to have a bodily relationship aside from the promise of marriage made by the person, corresponding to private liking for the male companion with out insisting upon formal marital ties. Thus, in a scenario the place a bodily relationship is maintained for a protracted interval knowingly by the girl, it can’t be stated with certainty that the stated bodily relationship was purely due to the alleged promise made by the appellant to marry her.”
The judgment stated that “within the current case, even assuming that the appellant had made the promise since 2008 after they met for the primary time, the truth that they remained single for a protracted interval until 2017 with out there being any protest or objection by the complainant, doesn’t point out the intention on the preliminary stage itself to make the promise falsely to marry the complainant. Making an allegation of non-fulfilment of promise to marry with out undue delay by the promisee would, however, be an indicator of a false promise being constructed from the preliminary stage. Within the current case, what just isn’t in dispute is that the bodily relationship between the appellant and the complainant continued for a protracted interval of a couple of decade and as such it’s tough to deduce that the appellant had made a false promise because the preliminary stage and continued to make false guarantees to marry her on the premise of which she additionally continued to have bodily relationship with him.”
The courtroom stated that “the conduct of the complainant clearly reveals that she is a mature individual clearly able to understanding the results of her acts and she or he was totally conscious of the form of illicit relationship she was sustaining with a married individual” and “was totally conscious that the appellant was already married and had two wives, although one in every of them was not holding properly”.
It added, “thus from the above it seems that it’s extra of an extra-marital affair in the course of the aforesaid interval with none insistence by the complainant for getting married to the appellant”.
