Bengaluru: The Supreme Court has upheld a high court judgment, dropping rape, cheating and criminal intimidation proceedings initiated against a man and his family by a woman after their engagement broke down.
“We are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order passed by the high court. The special leave petition is, accordingly, dismissed,” a bench comprising Justices Bela M Trivedi and KV Viswanathan observed in its order passed on Tuesday.
The woman from Kundapura in Udupi district had filed the special leave petition challenging the June 7, 2024, order of the Karnataka High Court quashing the proceedings against the man and his family members pending before a local court in Kundapura.
The man, who works in a shipping company in the US, came in contact with the woman through the Shetty Matrimonial website. On Jan 11, 2023, the two got engaged and their marriage was fixed for Sept 8, 2023. However, during the interregnum period, serious differences cropped up, and the engagement broke down.
The woman then filed a complaint in Aug 2023 with Kundapura police, accusing the man and his family members of cheating. She alleged that on the evening of the engagement day, her fiancée had sexual intercourse with her on the promise of marriage. Police filed a chargesheet, invoking rape and cheating charges against the man and criminal intimidation charges against his family members. They challenged the same before the high court.
The petitioners claimed that the charge of rape against the man was highly improbable as all of them were present in the wedding hall after the engagement ceremony, and there was no occasion that he took her to a room upstairs after 6pm and raped her. According to them, for about seven months, the complainant was demanding money from her then fiancée, and the same created doubts in their mind about the woman’s family and hence, the marriage was called off.
The high court noted that merely because the engagement breaks at a later date, it cannot amount to an offence of cheating against the bridegroom or his family members. “One cannot deny the possibility of the accused making a promise with all seriousness to marry the complainant. Circumstances beyond control would have prevented fulfilling the promise. It would be a folly to treat each breach of promise of marriage as a false promise and to prosecute a person for offences punishable under Section 376 of the IPC,” the high court said.
“The observations of the Supreme Court would clearly become applicable to the facts of the case at hand. The first petitioner also did not perform the alleged act on a false promise of marriage; it is allegedly performed on the date of the betrothal ceremony. Therefore, it cannot be construed to be a false promise of marriage. It, at best, could be a breach of promise of marriage, which would not become an offence under Section 376 of the IPC,” the judge noted.
The high court also said it was not a case where the man or his family lured the complainant or her family members to get into the marriage. “It was an agreement between both the families to perform the marriage of the man and the woman,” the court said while quashing the proceedings.