Times of Navi Mumbai | India News
The Supreme Court of India has said that a relationship ending does not automatically mean that past consensual physical intimacy was rape.
The court said that if two adults were in a relationship and agreed to physical intimacy, it cannot later be called rape only because their relationship ended. However, cases involving force, threats, fraud or false promises to obtain consent must be treated differently.
A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan made these observations while hearing a case from Kerala. The court discharged a man named Santosh Kumar N P from charges of rape and cheating.
The woman had accused him of hiding his earlier marriage. She said he married her while his first marriage was still legally in place and that he had physical relations with her by making her believe their marriage was valid.
The woman said they lived together from 1996 to 2003 after getting married in Mysore.
The Supreme Court said that every failed relationship should not turn into a criminal case. It also made clear that the law must protect people from real sexual violence, force and fraud.
The court stressed that the decision to end a relationship is not, by itself, proof of rape or cheating.
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