The Informant has alleged that the accused imprrssing upon her and making her believe that she is legally married wife , had physical relationship with her and when the informant asked him to tie the knot as per customs and rituals , the accused abused her in filthy languages and told her that he is not interested to marry her as she belongs to lower caste .
The investing officer has enlisted the informant , one independent witness and himself in the list of witness .
Note : The participants have to cross examine the witness .
- The consent for s*xual intercourse obtained by a person by giving false promise of marriage would not excuse him from rape charges. Whenever the accused gives promise to the victim to marry her, never had any intention to marry and the victim gave the consent for s*xual intercourse on such an assurance by the accused that he would marry her, such a consent can be said to be a consent obtained on a misconception of fact as per Section 90 of the Indian Panel Code, and, in such a case, such a consent would not excuse the offender and such an offender can be said to have committed the rape as defined under Section 375 of the Indian Panel Code, and can be convicted for the offence under Section 376 of the IPC.
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Consent may be express or implied, coerced or misguided, obtained willingly or through deceit. Consent is an act of reason, accompanied by deliberation, the mind weighing, as in a balance, the good and evil on each side. There is a clear distinction between rape and consensual s*x and in a case like this, the court must very carefully examine whether the accused had actually wanted to marry the victim, or had mala fide motives, and had made a false promise to this effect only to satisfy his lust, as the latter falls within the ambit of cheating or deception. There is a distinction between the mere breach of a promise, and not fulfilling a false promise. Thus, the court must examine whether there was made, at an early stage a false promise of marriage by the accused; and whether the consent involved was given after wholly understanding the nature and consequences of s*xual indulgence. There may be a case where the prosecutrix agrees to have s*xual intercourse on account of her love and passion for the accused, and not solely on account of misrepresentation made to her by the accused, or where an accused on account of circumstances which he could not have foreseen, or which were beyond his control, was unable to marry her, despite having every intention to do so. Such cases must be treated differently. An accused can be convicted for rape only if the court reaches a conclusion that the intention of the accused was mala fide, and that he had clandestine motives.
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Hence, it is evident that there must be adequate evidence to show that at the relevant time i.e. at the initial stage itself, the accused had no intention, whatsoever, of keeping his promise to marry the victim. There may, of course, be circumstances, when a person having the best of intentions is unable to marry the victim owing to various unavoidable circumstances. The “failure to keep a promise made with respect to a future uncertain date, due to reasons that are not very clear from the evidence available, does not always amount to misconception of fact. In order to come within the meaning of the term “misconception of fact”, the fact must have an immediate relevance”. Section 90 IPC cannot be called into aid in such a situation, to pardon the act of a girl in entirety, and fasten criminal liability on the other, unless the court is assured of the fact that from the very beginning, the accused had never really intended to marry her
