New Delhi: Supreme Court has quashed rape charges against a man who had a consensual physical relationship with a 30-year-old woman but backed out of his marriage promise after observing her “aggressive sexual behaviour, obsessive nature, and manipulative and vindictive tendencies”.Allowing the man’s plea to quash the FIRs lodged against him by Cyberabad police in 2022 on the woman’s complaints accusing him of establishing a physical relationship with the promise of marriage, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said, “The facts on record clearly establish the vindictive and manipulative tendencies of the complainant and these aspects have a great bearing on the controversy.”Writing the judgment, Justice Mehta said allowing the man’s prosecution would be nothing but gross abuse of the process of law and the complaints were “nothing but a bundle of lies full of fabricated and malicious unsubstantiated allegations levelled by the complainant (woman)”.The court was informed about a similar complaint the woman had lodged against an assistant professor at Osmania University in 2021, where she was studying. What rescued the man in the present case was the chats of the woman, who went by the name ‘Muffin’ on social media.In the chats, she admitted to being manipulative and her desire to “get a green card holder”. “At one point of time, she also stated that it would not be difficult for her to trap the next one. In the very same breath, she mentions that she would not waste time with the accused appellant and needs to ‘invest on the next victim’. She also mentions that she would irritate her victims to the extent that they dump her, and she could happily start with the next one. She also stated that she was using the accused appellant,” the bench recorded in its judgment.“These chats depict the stark reality about the behavioural pattern of the de-facto complainant who appears to be having manipulative and vindictive tendencies. Thus, in our opinion, the accused appellant was absolutely justified in panicking and backing out from the proposed marriage upon coming to know of the aggressive sexual behaviour and the obsessive nature of the de-facto complainant,” Justices Nath and Mehta said.Quashing the FIRs, the SC said, “Hence, even assuming that the accused appellant retracted from his promise to marry the complainant, it cannot be said that he indulged in sexual intercourse with the de-facto complainant under a false promise of marriage or that the offence was committed by him with the de-facto complainant on the ground that she belonged to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes community.”