Courts cannot become forum for personal vendetta if every broken relationship is clothed as criminality: Karnataka HC

Observing that “if every broken relationship is cloaked in the garb of crime, the courts will become forums of personal vengeance instead of forums of justice”, the Karnataka High Court quashed a rape and cheating case against a man registered by a woman in India after she had consensual physical intercourse in Ireland for over two years.

While allowing the petition filed by the man who challenged the criminal case filed against him in October 2024, Justice M. Nagaprasanna said, “This is not a case of having sexual intercourse through deception from the beginning, it is a trite behavior that the law does not criminalize heartbreak.”

in ireland

The case had its origins in Ireland, where the petitioner and the complainant met in 2021 while pursuing their higher education. Their friendship turned into a physical relationship, and by December 2022, they were living together as consenting adults. The relationship continued for over two years until it broke down in mid-2024.

The court noted that the complaining woman was already married and had a five-year-old child when she met the petitioner and her divorce petition from her husband was pending even before her relationship with the petitioner began. The court stated that the complainant got divorced in August 2023, all the incidents of sexual intimacy with the petitioner took place in Ireland and not in India and both of them returned to India in August 2024 and the complaint was filed after the petitioner’s family also did not agree to the marriage.

Not forcing

Upon the applicant’s allegation that he established a physical relationship upon the promise of marriage and later violated it, the court decided that the complaint referred to “friendship, cohabitation, common home life and consensual intimacy lasting more than two years” rather than “pressure, initial deception or coercion”.

A consensual relationship between adults cannot be retroactively criminalized simply because one party withdraws from the relationship; the court said while noticing from the documents submitted to it that the complainant allegedly had sex with another man after registering the case against the plaintiff.

The court observed: “A promise of marriage becomes ‘spurious’ in law only when it is proven that the promise was merely a ruse, a deceptive strategy, and was never intended to be fulfilled.” The court stated: “A subsequent change of heart, emotional discord, familial opposition, or mere reluctance does not initially translate into criminal intent.”