Ankit Tomar v. State of Haryana
Background
The appellant was accused of raping a woman on a false promise of marriage after the two had a relationship while she managed a massage parlour where he was a customer. The complainant was, admittedly, already married with two children and not divorced or separated from her husband; the relationship lasted from August 2023 to March 2024, and the FIR was filed days after the appellant married someone else and days after the complainant told him she was pregnant. The Punjab & Haryana High Court had declined to quash the FIR, distinguishing it from a recent Supreme Court precedent (Amol Bhagwan Nehul v. State of Maharashtra); the accused appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held the facts were squarely covered by its own recent ruling in Amol Bhagwan Nehul, where an FIR was quashed because the complainant's consent could not be attributed to any promise of marriage where such a promise was never a realistic possibility. Here too, since the complainant was already married with children throughout the relationship, a promise of marriage from the appellant could never have been a genuine inducement, meaning the relationship was consensual and not obtained by deception. The Court held it was unnecessary to wait for a pending DNA/FSL report on the (now deceased) child, since even a positive result would not revive the "false promise" allegation, and it quashed the FIR and all related proceedings, cancelling the appellant's bail bonds.
Lesson Learnt
A rape charge premised on "consent obtained by a false promise of marriage" cannot stand where the complainant was already married throughout the relationship, since a promise of marriage in such circumstances could never have been a real or believable inducement. Courts will quash such FIRs at the threshold rather than let a fundamentally consensual relationship proceed to trial as a criminal case.