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Maheshwar Tigga v. The State of Jharkhand

Criminal Appeal · 2020 INSC 564Decided 28 Sept 2020
Criminal Appeal No. 635 of 2020
Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman · Justice Navin Sinha · Justice Indira Banerjee

Background

The appellant was convicted of rape, assault, and wrongful restraint based on an FIR filed four years after the alleged first incident, in which the complainant said the appellant had assaulted her at knifepoint and then continued a physical relationship with her for years on a promise of marriage, which he abandoned just before marrying another woman. The trial court and the High Court both convicted him, relying on love letters and photographs exchanged between the two and his responses under police questioning.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found the prosecution's case riddled with doubt: there was wide, unexplained variation in evidence about the complainant's age at the time (ranging from the prosecution's claim of 14 to a doctor's independent estimate of about 25), the questioning of the accused under Section 313 Cr.P.C. was "extremely casual and perfunctory" and failed to properly put the evidence to him, and letters and testimony showed a genuine, years-long mutual love affair rather than a predatory deception. The Court held that a promise of marriage only amounts to rape if it was false and never genuinely intended from the very outset: here, the relationship failed because the two belonged to different religious communities, not because the appellant never intended to marry her. The conviction was set aside and the appellant acquitted and ordered released.

Lesson Learnt

A relationship that fails to end in marriage is not automatically "rape by false promise": the law requires proof that the promise was dishonest from the very beginning; a long, mutual, consensual relationship evidenced by letters and conduct points the other way.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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