The Supreme Court has once again entered the difficult legal terrain of relationships, consent and criminal liability, while hearing a case involving allegations of sexual assault on the ground of a false promise of marriage. The Court questioned how such a charge could be sustained in a long-term live-in relationship where the parties had lived together and had a child, asking why the complainant had chosen to live with the accused before marriage.
The matter arose from allegations that the accused had exploited the complainant, a young widow, by promising marriage and entering into a physical relationship with her. Counsel for the petitioner argued that the promise to marry was false from the beginning, and that the accused had taken advantage of her vulnerable position. The Court, however, appeared reluctant to treat the relationship as a straightforward case of deception, especially given the prolonged cohabitation and the birth of a child.
The Bench also declined to enter into allegations relating to the accused’s relationships with other women, indicating that the Court was concerned with the legal ingredients of the present case rather than the broader moral character of the accused. Justice B.V. Nagarathna also questioned the delay in filing the complaint, a factor that often becomes relevant in assessing whether the allegation reflects deception from inception or a relationship that later broke down.
At the heart of the controversy is the distinction between a false promise of marriage and a breach of promise to marry. Indian criminal law treats the two differently. A false promise exists where the accused never intended to marry from the beginning and used that promise only to obtain consent. A breach, however, may occur when parties genuinely intended marriage but the relationship later collapsed. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that every failed relationship cannot be converted into a rape prosecution merely because marriage did not eventually take place.
This distinction is legally crucial because consent under criminal law is vitiated only when obtained through misconception of fact. Therefore, the prosecution must show that the promise of marriage was not merely unfulfilled, but fraudulent from the inception. In recent decisions, the Supreme Court has emphasised that the physical relationship must be directly traceable to the false promise and not to other circumstances such as affection, mutual companionship or long-term cohabitation.
The live-in dimension makes the case more complex. Courts have increasingly recognised that where two adults voluntarily cohabit for a long period, the relationship may not easily be reduced to a single inducement of marriage. In 2025, the Supreme Court observed that long cohabitation may imply that the parties continued the relationship without insisting on marriage, making allegations of rape on false promise harder to sustain in such cases.
However, this line of reasoning must be handled with care. A live-in relationship does not automatically negate deception. If a man enters such an arrangement while knowingly making a false representation of marriage, or concealing facts that make marriage impossible, criminal liability may still arise. The Delhi High Court recently refused anticipatory bail in a case where the accused allegedly concealed his existing marriage and children while inducing the complainant into a relationship and pregnancy.
The present case therefore illustrates the delicate balance courts must maintain. On one side lies the need to prevent misuse of rape law in cases of consensual relationships that subsequently fail. On the other lies the equally serious need to protect women from fraudulent sexual exploitation under the guise of marriage. The judicial task is not to moralise intimacy, but to determine whether consent was real, informed and voluntary at the time it was given.
The Court’s oral question why the complainant lived with the accused before marriage may invite debate because such remarks can appear to shift attention from the accused’s alleged deception to the woman’s choices. In modern constitutional jurisprudence, an adult woman’s decision to enter a live-in relationship cannot, by itself, weaken her legal claim. The real question remains whether her consent was obtained through deceit. That distinction is essential to avoid slipping from legal analysis into social judgment.
At the same time, the Court’s concern reflects a genuine legal anxiety: criminal law cannot become a post-breakup remedy. Rape is among the gravest offences in the penal law, and its invocation requires clear satisfaction of statutory ingredients. If the relationship was prolonged, voluntary and marked by mutual cohabitation, courts will naturally demand stronger material to show that the promise of marriage was false from the very beginning.
The case forms part of a broader judicial trend where courts are scrutinising false promise cases more carefully. High Courts and the Supreme Court have repeatedly cautioned that consensual intimacy between adults cannot be retrospectively criminalised merely because the relationship ended badly. At the same time, they have preserved liability in cases where deception, concealment or fraudulent inducement is clearly established.
In conclusion, the Supreme Court’s observations reopen an important debate on autonomy, consent and criminal accountability in intimate relationships. The law must protect women from deceit, but it must also resist converting every failed relationship into a criminal offence. The decisive inquiry must remain narrow but rigorous: was the promise of marriage false from inception, and was the woman’s consent directly obtained on that basis? Anything less risks either trivialising rape law or ignoring genuine exploitation.
