The Supreme Court has delivered an important clarification on the scope of Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, holding that every broken promise of marriage cannot automatically be converted into a criminal prosecution for sexual intercourse obtained through deceitful means. The Court has emphasised that the decisive question is not simply whether the accused ultimately married the woman, but whether, at the very time the promise was made, he had no intention whatsoever of fulfilling it and used that false promise as a means of obtaining sexual relations. Where the subsequent refusal arises from circumstances that developed after the promise, the essential element of initial deception may be absent.
The ruling came in Kunal Rameshbhai Kalyani v. State of Gujarat & Anr., where a Bench comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran exercised its jurisdiction to quash an FIR registered under Section 69 BNS at Sayajigunj Police Station, Vadodara City. The case required the Court to examine an important distinction introduced into the criminal-law framework by the BNS: the difference between a relationship that ends in disappointment and a relationship allegedly founded from the beginning upon a deliberately false promise of marriage.
The factual allegations, as reflected in the complaint, described a relationship that had developed after the parties came into contact through a digital platform. The relationship progressed from acquaintance to friendship and thereafter into a romantic relationship. Physical relations followed. The complainant alleged that the appellant had expressed an intention to marry her and that the relationship was pursued on that representation. The parties also stayed together at a hotel for two days during the relevant period. The FIR was ultimately registered on May 20, 2025, in respect of alleged conduct said to have occurred in 2024.
The allegation that ultimately became decisive was that the appellant later declined to marry the complainant because his mother did not approve of the proposed marriage. The complainant therefore approached the criminal process alleging that the sexual relationship had been induced by a promise of marriage which was subsequently withdrawn. The Gujarat High Court declined to quash the FIR, relying principally upon the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana. The accused consequently approached the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court’s scrutiny began with the statutory language itself. Section 69 BNS creates a specific offence where a person, by “deceitful means” or by making a promise to marry a woman without any intention of fulfilling the same, has sexual intercourse with her, provided the conduct does not amount to rape. The statutory formulation is therefore materially different from a provision that criminalises every subsequent failure to honour a promise of marriage. The legislature has chosen to criminalise the deceit embedded in the promise, rather than the mere fact of the relationship eventually failing.
This distinction is central to the judgment. A promise can be broken without having been false when it was made. Human relationships are capable of changing because of circumstances, family opposition, incompatibility, financial considerations, social pressures or other developments. Criminal law, however, ordinarily requires a culpable act or mental state identified by the statute. Section 69 does not punish disappointment as such; it targets a promise allegedly made without any intention of being honoured.
The Court consequently focused on the mens rea at the inception of the promise. If the prosecution is to proceed under the second limb of Section 69, there must be material indicating that the accused entered into the promise while already possessing the intention not to fulfil it. The subsequent failure to marry can provide contextual evidence, but it cannot by itself conclusively establish that the original promise was fraudulent.
The distinction between a “false promise” and a “breach of promise” is not new to Indian criminal jurisprudence. The Supreme Court had developed this principle under the IPC in cases involving Section 375 read with Section 90. In Deepak Gulati and subsequently in Pramod Suryabhan Pawar v. State of Maharashtra, the Court explained that a false promise is one where the maker had no intention of fulfilling it at the time it was made. A subsequent inability or refusal to marry, without more, does not necessarily establish that the promise was false from the beginning.
The present ruling is significant because Section 69 BNS has created a standalone statutory offence dealing specifically with sexual intercourse obtained through deceitful means, including a promise to marry made without an intention to fulfil it. The Court therefore considered it necessary to carefully identify the ingredients of the new offence rather than mechanically importing the entire analytical framework applicable to rape prosecutions under the former IPC.
The Court observed that under the previous IPC framework, cases involving sexual relations induced by a false promise of marriage were generally examined through the concept of consent under Section 90 and the offence of rape under Section 375. Section 69 BNS, by contrast, expressly creates an offence of sexual intercourse by employing deceitful means which does not amount to rape. The provision consequently occupies a distinct position within the new penal architecture.
The legislative choice is important. Section 69 does not simply criminalise non-performance of a promise. It criminalises deceptive sexual conduct where the promise itself is part of the deception. This means that courts must distinguish between two very different factual situations: a person who enters a relationship while genuinely intending to marry but subsequently changes his mind or is prevented by circumstances, and a person who never intended marriage but deliberately represents otherwise in order to obtain sexual relations.
The Supreme Court found that the FIR in the present case did not sufficiently disclose the latter situation. Rather, the allegations themselves suggested that the relationship had developed over time and involved repeated interactions between the parties. The complaint did not, in the Court’s assessment, provide material establishing that the appellant had entered into the relationship with a predetermined intention never to marry.
One particular circumstance weighed heavily with the Bench: according to the complaint itself, the appellant subsequently expressed willingness to marry but the marriage did not take place because his mother did not approve of the relationship. The Supreme Court viewed this circumstance as difficult to reconcile with the allegation that the appellant had made the promise from the outset with no intention of fulfilling it. If the accused later attempted to proceed with the marriage and the relationship failed because of opposition from his family, the allegation of an original fraudulent promise becomes substantially weaker.
The Court’s reasoning is important because it prevents the criminal law from treating every unsuccessful romantic relationship as evidence of deception. The fact that a person eventually refuses marriage may undoubtedly cause serious emotional and personal consequences, but criminal liability under Section 69 requires something more precise: the promise must itself have been deceitful when it was made.
This does not mean that a person can escape criminal liability simply by asserting that the promise was genuine. Nor does the judgment create an evidentiary presumption in favour of every accused person. Where the surrounding circumstances reveal that the accused never intended to marry for example, where the promise was repeatedly used to obtain sexual relations, the accused concealed material facts, simultaneously maintained another marriage or relationship, or otherwise demonstrated conduct inconsistent with any genuine intention to marry—the prosecution may still satisfy the statutory threshold. The question remains one of evidence and circumstances.
Indeed, emerging High Court jurisprudence demonstrates precisely why the distinction has to remain fact-sensitive. Courts have refused to treat Section 69 as an automatic consequence of every relationship ending in a refusal to marry, while in other cases they have found sufficient prima facie material where the surrounding circumstances indicate a potentially fraudulent promise. A Delhi High Court decision, for example, has treated repeated assurances of marriage followed by a refusal attributed to horoscope incompatibility as capable of raising a prima facie issue under Section 69.
Similarly, the Karnataka High Court has recently considered circumstances in which the accused allegedly approached the woman’s family seeking approval for marriage and the proposal was rejected by the woman’s mother. In that factual context, the Court found the accused’s conduct relevant to the question whether he had genuinely intended to fulfil the promise. The developing jurisprudence therefore suggests that the courts are examining the conduct surrounding the promise, rather than mechanically equating subsequent refusal with initial fraud.
The Supreme Court’s judgment therefore should not be read as creating an immunity for persons who exploit women through false assurances of marriage. Such conduct falls squarely within the mischief that Section 69 was enacted to address. The Court has instead insisted that the prosecution must identify the element that makes such conduct criminal: deception existing at the inception of the promise and a nexus between that deception and the sexual relationship.
This requirement of nexus is particularly important. A promise of marriage may exist in a relationship without necessarily being the reason why sexual relations occurred. Section 69 requires more than the chronological sequence of “promise, sexual relationship, refusal to marry”. The prosecution must establish the legally significant connection between the deceptive promise and the sexual act. The statutory language therefore demands an inquiry into causation as well as intention.
The Supreme Court’s approach also has implications for the exercise of inherent jurisdiction to quash criminal proceedings. At the stage of considering a quashing petition, the Court ordinarily does not conduct a mini-trial or determine disputed questions of evidence. But where the allegations, even if accepted in their entirety, fail to disclose the essential ingredients of an offence, continuing the prosecution can amount to an abuse of the criminal process. That was the basis upon which the Court intervened in the present case.
The Court examined the complaint on its own terms rather than requiring the accused to establish his innocence through a full trial. This is consistent with the established principle that criminal prosecution cannot be permitted to continue merely because an allegation has been given a penal label. The factual assertions must correspond to the statutory ingredients of the offence alleged.
The judgment also illustrates the importance of reading Section 69 in conjunction with the broader provisions of the BNS. Section 28 BNS now addresses consent given under misconception of fact, broadly occupying the conceptual space previously associated with Section 90 IPC. But Section 69 independently criminalises a specific category of deceptive sexual conduct. The two provisions should therefore not be collapsed into one another. The statutory architecture indicates a deliberate legislative attempt to distinguish rape from certain forms of deceitful sexual intercourse that fall short of rape but nevertheless warrant criminal sanction.
The distinction is doctrinally valuable because it prevents the new provision from becoming either too narrow or too broad. If Section 69 were interpreted to punish every failure to marry after sexual relations, it could effectively transform a broken relationship into a criminal offence irrespective of the accused’s intention at the beginning. That would extend the provision beyond its text. Conversely, if courts demanded direct documentary proof of an accused’s internal intention before permitting prosecution, the provision could become practically impossible to enforce. The appropriate approach lies between these extremes: intention must ordinarily be inferred from objective circumstances, but the circumstances must be capable of supporting the inference of deception at the inception.
The phrase “without any intention of fulfilling the same” therefore performs a critical limiting function. It is not decorative language. It distinguishes criminal deception from ordinary relationship breakdown. The Supreme Court’s insistence upon this ingredient strengthens the principle of legality by ensuring that criminal liability follows the conduct Parliament has actually chosen to punish.
There is also an important gender-justice dimension to the ruling. Section 69 was introduced against the backdrop of concern over sexual relationships allegedly obtained through fraudulent assurances of marriage. Its existence reflects the law’s recognition that deception can cause serious harm even where the conduct does not meet the technical ingredients of rape. Protecting women against such exploitation is a legitimate criminal-law objective. But protection cannot mean eliminating the requirement of proof of the statutory ingredients. The credibility of protective legislation itself depends upon principled application.
The judgment consequently attempts to maintain a difficult equilibrium: women must have an effective criminal remedy against genuine sexual exploitation through fraudulent marriage promises, while consensual relationships that subsequently fail cannot automatically be criminalised. The dividing line is the intention and deception accompanying the promise, assessed through the factual circumstances of each case.
The Court’s treatment of the mother’s objection is particularly revealing in this context. The Bench did not hold that parental opposition can, as a matter of law, excuse every refusal to marry. Nor did it declare that family pressure automatically negates criminal liability. Rather, it considered the particular allegation in the FIR—that the accused refused to marry because his mother did not permit it—as evidence inconsistent with the proposition that he had never intended to marry. In other words, the mother’s objection was relevant because of what it revealed about the accused’s earlier state of mind, not because parental disapproval has any independent legal status under Section 69.
This distinction is essential. Otherwise, the judgment could be misunderstood as establishing a broad “mother’s objection” defence to Section 69 prosecutions. That is not the legal proposition emerging from the ruling. The relevant question remains whether the accused possessed the requisite deceptive intention when he made the promise. Family opposition is merely one factual circumstance that may bear upon that inquiry.
The ruling also carries an important warning against retrospective criminalisation of failed relationships. Criminal law generally operates on culpable conduct, not merely on undesirable outcomes. If a person genuinely intends to marry and later changes his decision, the moral consequences of that decision may be serious, but the criminal law cannot automatically infer that the original intention was fraudulent.
At the same time, the Court has not weakened the evidentiary significance of subsequent conduct. A later refusal can, depending upon the circumstances, be powerful evidence of what the accused intended from the beginning. The distinction is therefore not between “promise” and “refusal”, but between a refusal that reveals an original dishonest intention and a refusal resulting from circumstances that arose subsequently.
The case also demonstrates the importance of precise drafting of FIRs in prosecutions under Section 69. Merely stating that the accused promised marriage, had sexual relations and later refused to marry may not adequately disclose the offence. The complaint must, where facts permit, contain circumstances from which the initial deceitful intention and the causal connection between the promise and the sexual act can reasonably be inferred.
This does not impose a requirement that a complainant prove the entire prosecution case at the FIR stage. It simply reflects the basic principle that the allegations must disclose the ingredients of the offence invoked. Investigation may subsequently uncover additional evidence. But the criminal process cannot begin and continue solely on the assumption that because marriage ultimately did not take place, the original promise must necessarily have been false.
The Supreme Court’s reliance upon Deepak Gulati also demonstrates continuity between the jurisprudence developed under the IPC and the statutory framework of the BNS. Although Section 69 is a new offence, the conceptual distinction between a false promise and a subsequently broken promise was already well established. The BNS has given that distinction a more direct statutory expression, making the requirement of initial intention particularly significant.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court quashed FIR No. 11196030250292 registered on May 20, 2025 at Sayajigunj Police Station, Vadodara City, holding that the allegations did not disclose the deceitful conduct necessary to sustain a prosecution under Section 69 BNS. The Court’s conclusion was rooted not in an assessment of the morality of the relationship but in the absence of material demonstrating that the alleged promise was fraudulent when it was made.
The judgment in Kunal Rameshbhai Kalyani is therefore an important early Supreme Court interpretation of Section 69 BNS. Its central lesson is that the new provision must be applied as a law against deceit, not as a law against romantic disappointment. A genuine promise that later fails because circumstances change is conceptually different from a promise manufactured from the outset to secure sexual relations.
The broader jurisprudential challenge, however, will lie in maintaining this distinction consistently. Since intention is ordinarily a matter of inference rather than direct proof, courts will increasingly have to examine conduct before, during and after the relationship to determine whether subsequent refusal exposes an original fraudulent design. The provision will therefore require careful factual adjudication rather than formulaic application.
For the criminal justice system, the balance is delicate. An interpretation that is excessively broad risks converting intimate relationship disputes into criminal litigation; an interpretation that is excessively narrow could deprive women of meaningful protection against deliberate sexual exploitation through false assurances of marriage. The Supreme Court has, in the present case, placed the emphasis where Section 69 itself places it: on deceitful means and the absence of intention to fulfil the promise at the time it was made.
That principle provides the necessary legal boundary. The failure of a relationship may be painful, unjust or even morally reprehensible, but Section 69 BNS requires something more before criminal liability can arise. It requires deception that existed when the promise was made and that deception must have a legally relevant connection with the sexual relationship. By insisting upon that threshold, the Supreme Court has sought to ensure that the newly created offence remains a targeted instrument against fraudulent sexual conduct rather than becoming a general penal provision governing every failed promise of marriage.
