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Rape law needs to be amended over false promise of marriage’: Orissa High Court
Hig Court judge SK Panigrahi ruled that rape laws should not be used to regulate intimate relationships.
Orissa High Court has observed that there is a need to amend the law defining rape on the pretext of a false promise of marriage. The court observed this while rejecting the bail application of a man accused of rape.
HC judge SK Panigrahi ruled that rape laws should not be used to regulate intimate relationships, especially in cases where women are entering a relationship by choice. The law on this matter lacks clarity for the conviction of the accused, the court said.
Police had booked the accused last year under sections 376(1), 313, 294 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66(E) and 67(A) of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 on charges of raping a girl. The girl had alleged that the accused kept a physical relationship with her and promised to marry her. Due to their physical relationship, the girl got pregnant twice and alleged that the man got both her pregnancies aborted by giving her some medicines.
In January last year, when the girl asked the man to marry her, he refused. In April, he allegedly posted their private photographs online using fake Facebook IDs created in her name. The man allegedly threatened to kill the girl and also said he would make her photographs go viral on Facebook, she alleged.
Though justice Panigrahi rejected the accused’s bail petition, he observed that rape laws should not be used to regulate intimate relationships, especially in cases where women have agency and are entering a relationship by choice.
“The law is well settled that consent obtained on a false promise to marry is not valid. Since the framers of the law have specifically provided the circumstances when ‘consent’ amounts to ‘no consent’ in terms of Section 375 of IPC, consent for the sexual act on the pretext of marriage is not one of the circumstances mentioned under Section 375 of IPC. Hence, the automatic extension of provisions of Section 90 of IPC to determine the effect of consent under Section 375 of IPC deserves a serious relook. The law holding that false promise to marriage amounts to rape appears to be erroneous,” justice Panigrahy said.
He further said the judiciary has dealt with this clamour with the use of concepts such as “misconception of facts under Section 90 of IPC” and “intention of accused from the beginning” to provide justice to the parties. However, a certain viewpoint has not been reached and remains under the shroud of confusion.
The court, however, said that many of the complaints come from socially disadvantaged and poor segments of the society and rural areas. Women from these sections are often lured into sex by men on false promises of marriage and then dumped as soon as they get pregnant. “The rape law often fails to capture their plight,” the court said.
