In a significant verdict, the Supreme Court has held that a person having sex with a woman on the promise of marrying her will amount to rape and her consent will be of no consequence as it is obtained by fraud.
Giving this ruling, a Bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and M.R. Shah said this kind of consent obtained by the accused cannot be said to be any consent because she was under the misconception that the accused intends to marry her, therefore, she submitted to sexual intercourse with him. This kind of consent taken by the accused with a clear intention not to fulfill the promise and persuading the girl to believe that he is going to marry her and obtained her consent for the sexual intercourse under total misconception cannot be treated as consent.
Writing the judgment, Justice Shah said that such incidents are on the increase nowadays and that these are offenses against society. Rape is the most morally and physically reprehensible crime in a society, an assault on the body, mind, and privacy of the victim. As observed by this court in a catena of decisions, while a murderer destroys the physical frame of the victim, a rapist degrades and defiles the soul of a helpless female, the court observed.
Instead of talking about and making good laws about rapes, the so-called cultured government is making laws about consensual sex. This law portrays women as dumb people who cannot distinguish the wrong and right. A woman will physically be involved with a man only when she has some sense of trust. And if she has a little bit of doubt, it’s her fault to go for it. An adult girl isn’t a kid. Why blame men for all the decisions a woman makes? The concept of live-in: The whole point, well becomes moo. Live-in is a way to starting phase of marriage for many men and women these days. If the compatibility in every way possible is good, the couples opt for marriage or else move on. That’s the whole point of live-in. Now, if things don’t work out and the guys won’t find it good, I wonder if women will be at ease and not file a false complaint. If NO is a complete sentence, so is YES. A woman should say yes, only when she is too sure of things if marriage is what she believes in.
This is not a law to safeguard women. This is just to dictate the age-old saying “Women can’t decide.” If the government was actually bothered of securing women then instead of making laws for consensual sex, would have adjudicated the heaps of pending rape cases. Going by the facts of the case, the defendant convinced the plaintiff for a physical relationship for a promise to marry her in the near future. Later he refused.
No one should be forced to marry if at all they had been in a physical relationship because marriage is a lifelong promise to stay together after testing all the criteria related to compatibility and understanding equally. If at all the two are not fine with each other, they must be given full-fledged right to break up and move apart. If at all the social forces the people involved to marry without compatibility then there could be situations that are worst. Many women forced into marriage suffer further Domestic Abuse. These women feel unable to leave because of the lack of family support, economic pressure, and other social circumstances. Isolation is one of the biggest problems facing victims of forced marriage.
Ignorant Judges have been destroying young and innocent lives through rape convictions. There are several such cases where even in an arranged marriage setting, men approach women to fulfill their sexual desire before marriage and women never calculate all these things. They find it difficult to upset their future husband so they succumb to it and later these men have refused to marry the women.
Even today our patriarchal structure in the society feeds women that if they get into a sexual relationship with one man then they have to marry that same man or they will lose their respect and dignity.
Hence, the judgment passed is nothing but a way of distracting individuals and a waste of time to look upon. Because every person has his or her say in the relationship by taking note of all the factors that affect his or her future.
Mrinali Jaiswal
