NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a married woman who had physical relations with another man cannot file a rape case against him on the ground that she had sex on the promise of marriage, raising concerns over misuse of the criminal justice system in filing rape cases when a consensual relationship sours.A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said that in such cases where a woman is not eligible to marry due to subsistence of the marriage, she cannot invoke false promise of marriage. The court passed the order while quashing a criminal complaint filed against a lawyer by a female lawyer alleging that he raped her on false promises of marriage. The court said the complainant was already married at the time of the relationship and it was a “classic case of a consensual relationship becoming intense”. “Thus, even for the sake of argument, if the contention that there was indeed a false promise of marriage by the accused leading to his indulging in sexual activity is accepted, such promise would not be legally enforceable and could not even be honoured, as the victim herself was not eligible for marriage either on the date of the first alleged offense or on any subsequent date when the parties indulged in sexual activity up to the date of registration of the FIR. The said embargo arises out of sub-section (i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, Section 5 Article 1 expressly prohibits marriage between two persons if either party has a surviving spouse.”The judge said that given how the law is being misused today, the courts must be very careful in identifying genuine cases of rape and look for the essential elements that constitute the said offence.
