Failed Consensual Relationship Cannot Turn Prior Intimacy Into Rape, Supreme Court Discharges Man

On October 30, 2026, a Bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan discharged Santhosh Kumar N.P. of rape, cheating and bigamy-related charges, holding that the failure of an adult consensual relationship cannot turn earlier consensual intimacy into rape, a point trial courts are now measuring against the law against statutory rape in India and adult consent. He had faced proceedings under Sections 376, 420, 493, 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code. The Bench allowed his appeals and set aside the orders of the trial court and the Kerala High Court that had refused discharge.

Both lower courts had kept the prosecution alive. The trial court declined to discharge the accused, and the Kerala High Court upheld that refusal. The Supreme Court reversed both orders. It examined the complaint and the accompanying material to decide whether the ingredients of each provision were made out at the threshold, without holding a full trial on disputed facts.

Justice Nagarathna, speaking for the Bench, said there was a worrying pattern in which a consensual relationship that later turned sour was picked apart to find criminal liability. Such a re-reading, the Court said, cheapens rape as an offence and brands the accused unfairly. Intimacy between two willing adults cannot be called rape only because the relationship ended.

Five provisions of the Indian Penal Code were in play. Section 376 punished rape. Section 420 dealt with cheating and dishonestly inducing a person to deliver property or to act in a certain way. Sections 493, 494 and 495 covered marriage-related deception and bigamy, including inducing a woman to believe she was lawfully married, marrying again during the lifetime of a spouse, and committing that act while concealing the earlier marriage. Each charge, the Bench said, had to be tested on its own ingredients. A general complaint of betrayal was not enough.

Consent, the Court said, was the dividing line. Where an adult woman entered and stayed in a sexual relationship willingly, the man’s later refusal to continue the relationship or to marry did not wipe out that earlier consent. The break itself was not proof of force, absence of consent, or deception that vitiated consent from the start. Judges must look at the state of mind at the time of the acts, not at regret or anger after the split.

Law against statutory rape in India: adult cases

The reference to child protection came up because the law against statutory rape in India treats sexual acts with a child below the age of consent as an offence regardless of claimed consent, a strict rule very different from cases involving adults who can give valid consent in law. This case fell in the second category. The test here turned on whether consent was free and voluntary when the intimacy took place. Trial judges know that distinction, but the Bench restated it so adult break-up cases are not judged through the same lens as child protection cases.

Its view, the Bench said, left intact the law for rape victim in India to seek prompt registration of complaints, medical support, protection of identity and safeguards at trial. Sexual violence remains grave, the judgment said, and genuine complaints call for firm action. The caution was aimed at a separate problem, the use of a serious charge as pressure after expectations in a relationship were not met. Courts must separate the failure to keep a personal assurance from a criminal act defined by statute.

Much of the argument turned on what lawyers describe as sex on false promise of marriage. The prosecution case suggested consent had been secured by a pledge to marry. The Court said such a claim needs more than proof that marriage did not happen. It must be shown that the promise was false from the beginning and was made only to obtain consent, with no intent to honour it. A promise that failed because the relationship deteriorated, families objected, or feelings changed stands on a different footing. Loose talk around promise of marriage quotes on social media, the reasoning suggests, cannot replace that legal test.

Trial judges often return to an earlier false promise of marriage judgement to frame that inquiry. Those decisions ask whether the promise was immediate and certain, whether the woman agreed only because of it, whether the man knew it could not be kept, and how the parties behaved over time. Commentaries sometimes compress these pointers into shorthand such as 7 promise of marriage checks, but the Supreme Court said labels do not decide cases. Length of the relationship, open conduct, travel together, communication records and absence of protest at the relevant time can all point to voluntary participation rather than deception.

Cheating failed for a related reason. It required dishonest intent at the outset and inducement linked to that deceit, not only disappointment when ties ended. The marriage-related provisions required proof of a sham ceremony or a second marriage during a subsisting marriage, not an unfulfilled plan to marry in future. These questions are distinct from debates around marital rape law in India and from the new penal framework, and lawyers tracking that shift often search for the phrase false promise of marriage BNS to find the corresponding clause on sexual acts by deceit. The Court applied the Indian Penal Code because the allegations predated the new code, and found none of the thresholds met.