‘Woman having sex outside marriage can’t cry rape’, says Punjab & Haryana HC, acquits accused; relationship deemed act of promiscuity | Chandigarh News
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has ruled that a fully mature, married woman who consents to sexual relations based on a promise of marriage cannot later claim it was rape.The court stated that such an act is an “act of promiscuity, immorality, and reckless disregard of the institution of marriage, not an inducement by a misconception of fact”.The court, however, recorded that although the accused cannot be regarded as completely innocent in this situation, such a relationship based on consent cannot be made the foundation of a charge as serious as under Section 376 (rape) of Indian Penal Code (IPC).Justice Shalini Singh Nagpal passed the orders while acquitting a man convicted in a rape case by a lower court in Punjab’s Tarn Taran.In March 2016, the trial court sentenced the man to nine-year imprisonment on the complaint of a woman who alleged that the police official developed physical relations with her under the false promise of marriage.The complainant, married to an Army personnel and mother of two children, claimed she was in a troubled marriage when the accused befriended her in 2012 during a bus journey. She alleged that he repeatedly raped her at her matrimonial home, threatened her with a pistol, and deceived her by promising marriage.Challenging his conviction, the man submitted to the high court that the trial court showed insensitivity to the facts and circumstances of the case.After hearing all the parties, the high court set aside the trial court’s order, observing that the woman was not a naive, innocent, bashful young lady who could not judge the implications of her impulsive decisions.“She was a grown-up woman, mother of two children, and was 10 years older than the appellant. She was intelligent enough to understand the consequences of the immoral acts for which she consented while her marriage was subsisting… The assertion that she was induced into a sexual relationship and raped by the appellant on the basis of a promise to marry stands irrefutably falsified,” Justice Nagpal observed in her detailed order.
