Naim Ahamed vs. State (NCT of Delhi)
Background
The complainant, a married woman with three children living in Uttam Nagar, Delhi, began a sexual relationship in 2009-2010 with Naim Ahamed, who rented a house opposite hers. She gave birth to his son in October 2011. In 2012 she visited his native village and discovered he was already married with children, yet continued living with him in separate rented premises; in 2014 she and her husband divorced by mutual consent and she left her three children with him. In March 2015 she filed an FIR alleging that the accused had obtained her consent by falsely promising to marry her. The Sessions Court convicted him of rape and sentenced him to 10 years plus Rs. 5 lakh compensation to her; the Delhi High Court reduced the sentence to 7 years but upheld the conviction and the compensation, which the accused paid. The accused's defence was that the relationship was consensual, that she knew he was married, and that she filed the case only when he refused her demand for Rs. 1.5-2 lakh.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court acquitted the accused. Reviewing its earlier rulings (Uday, Deelip Singh, Deepak Gulati, Dhruvaram Sonar), it drew the key distinction between a false promise (where the man never intended to marry from the very beginning and used the promise only to obtain sex, which vitiates consent) and a mere breach of promise, where a genuine promise later fails because of changed circumstances, which does not. It would be a "folly" to treat every broken promise of marriage as rape. On the facts, the Court found the complainant was a mature married woman who understood the nature and consequences of the relationship; she raised no complaint through the birth of the child, continued with the accused even after learning in 2012 that he was married, divorced her husband in 2014, and complained only in 2015 when disputes arose. Her consent therefore could not be said to have been given under a misconception of fact. The conviction and sentence were set aside, though the Rs. 5 lakh compensation already paid was left undisturbed because the accused had accepted responsibility for the child. Separately, noticing that the complainant's deposition had been recorded only in English though she testified in her own language, the Court directed all trial courts to comply with Section 277 CrPC: evidence must be recorded in the language of the court or of the witness, with a translation prepared, not in an English paraphrase alone.
Lesson Learnt
A sexual relationship becomes rape on the ground of a "promise to marry" only if the promise was false from the outset and was the sole reason for the consent: a relationship that continues for years with full knowledge of the facts is not converted into rape simply because the promise is later broken. Also, trial courts must record what a witness actually says in the witness's own language, because the original words, not a judge's English translation, are what count.