Courts cannot become forum for personal vendetta if every broken relationship is clothed as criminality: Karnataka HC

Observing that “if every broken relationship were to be clothed in the garb of criminality, the courts would transform into forum of personal vendetta, rather than forums of justice”, the High Court of Karnataka quashed rape and cheating case against a man registered by a woman in India after having consensual physical relationship with him for over two years in Ireland.

“It is not a case of having sexual relationship on deceit from the inception, it is trite that the law does not criminalise heart break,” observed Justice M. Nagaprasanna while allowing a petition filed by the man challenging the criminal case registered against him in October 2024.

In Ireland

The case had its origins in Ireland, where the petitioner and the complainant met in 2021 while pursuing their higher studies. Their friendship turned into a physical relationship, and by December 2022, they began living together as consenting adults. The relationship continued for over two years until it soured in mid-2024.

The court noted that the complainant-woman was already married with a five-year-old child when she met the petitioner, and a petition for divorce from her husband was pending even before her relationship began with the petitioner. The complainant got divorce in August, 2023, all incidents of sexual intimacy with petitioner occurred in Ireland, not in India and both returned to India in August, 2024, and complaint was lodged after petitioner’s family too did not agree for marriage, the court noted.

Not coersion

On the allegation that the petitioner had established physical relations on the promise of marriage, which he subsequently breached, the court found that the complaint did not narrate “coercion, deception at inception or force,” but instead spoke of “companionship, cohabitation, shared domesticity and consensual intimacy extending over two years”.

A consensual relationship between adults cannot be retroactively criminalised merely because one party withdraws from the relationship, the court said while noticing from the documents produced before it that the complainant had allegedly moved on to relationship with another man after registration the case against the petitioner.

“A promise of marriage becomes ‘false’ in law only when it is shown that the promise was a mere ruse, deceitful stratagem, never intended to be honoured,” the court observed while pointing out that “a subsequent change of mind, emotional incompatibility, familial opposition or mere reluctance does not transmute into criminal intent at inception.”