Consensual Sex On Promise Of Marriage Which Could Not Materialise Is Not Rape: Orissa HC

The Orissa High Court pronounced its decision and quashed the charge of rape faced by a Bhubaneswar-based man.

The Orissa High Court pronounced its decision and quashed the charge of rape faced by a Bhubaneswar-based man.

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The Orissa High Court has said that if a consensual physical relationship was based on a promise of marriage which could not be materialised for some reasons, it cannot be considered rape, as reported by the news agency PTI. The high court pronounced its decision and quashed the charge of rape faced by a Bhubaneswar-based man. The allegation against him was brought by a woman who is a friend of the petitioner and is in a matrimonial dispute with her husband for five years.

The other allegations against the petitioner such as cheating are left open for investigation, Justice R K Pattanaik said in the order, as reported by PTI. “There is a subtle difference between a breach of promise which is made in good faith but subsequently could not be fulfilled, and a false promise to marry," Pattanaik said, as quoted by PTI. 

“In the former case, for any such sexual intimacy, an offence under Section 376 IPC is not made out, whereas, in the latter, it is, since the same is based on the premise that the promise of marriage was false or fake from the very beginning,” the high court order of July 3 read, as quoted by PTI.

According to a Supreme Court order if two persons maintained a physical relationship on an assurance of marriage to the victim, which due to some reasons failed to materialise later, it cannot be called rape with a claim that the promise had been broken. “A sour relationship, if initially started and developed genuinely with friendship, should not always be branded as a product of mistrust, and the male partner should never be accused of rape,” a bench in the apex court said in connection with the case, as quoted by PTI.

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