CUTTACK: In a significant judgment, the Orissa High Court has held that breach of promise to marriage after sexual intimacy cannot be considered rape. The breach of promise, the court said is not the same as false promise to marriage. “There is a subtle difference between breach of promise which is made in good faith but subsequently could not be fulfilled and a false promise to marriage,” Justice RK Pattanaik observed in his judgement delivered on July 3.
In case of the former, for any such sexual intimacy, an offence under section 376 of IPC is not made out, whereas in the latter, it is, since the same is based on the premise that the promise to marriage was false or fake from the very beginning which is given on the understanding by the accused that it would be broken finally, the HC said. The ruling came in a case where the woman had entered into a relationship - which was built upon a friendship - with a man at a time when she was not divorced from her husband. The male partner had filed a petition challenging rape and cheating charges brought against him by the woman. Their relationship had lasted for seven years.
The HC observed that a sour relationship, if initially started and developed genuinely with friendship should not always be branded as a product of mistrust and mischief thereby accusing the male partner of rape. Justice Patnaik stated that the parties are educated and well-placed and were quite aware of the consequences and still engaged themselves in a relationship which remotely appear to be onesided and having understood the kind of relationship it was developed and had become later on, the court reaches at a conclusion that it would not be justified to allege rape against the petitioner.
“If ultimately from the FIR and material evidence, it is made to suggest that there was no genuine promise from the side of the accused or a false one was offered in order to induce the victim or to obtain her consent to maintain sexual relationship, it would be an act in bad faith and in that case, an offence under section 376 of IPC may be made out. But such is not the case where after a long relationship, it is broken and there has been a breach of promise for certain reasons,” the HC observed.