An FIR disclosing a prima facie case of rape cannot be quashed, and the truthfulness of allegations cannot be assessed at the quashing stage.

JUDGMENT :

Rakesh Kainthla, J.

1. The informant/victim made a complaint to the police that her husband had died one year before the complaint. She was known to Jagdish’s wife, posted in Girls School, who told her that her brother-in-law was serving at Shimla and she would get the informant married to him. She introduced the informant to the petitioner. They shared their numbers. The petitioner visited the old bus stand on the 26^th and took the victim to a room in a hotel on the pretext of getting acquainted with each other. The petitioner raped the informant in the room. He assured the victim to marry her and continued to talk to her. Subsequently, he refused to marry her. The police registered the FIR and conducted the investigation.

2. The petitioner filed the present petition seeking to quash the FIR, asserting that its registration constitutes an abuse of the process of law. The petitioner has been falsely implicated. The story propounded by the informant is a bundle of lies, full of inconsistencies and embellishments. The FIR does not disclose the ingredients of the offence. The petitioner is a 100% visually impaired person, and he never stayed with the informant. The FIR was lodged with mala fide intentions. Hence, the petition.

3. I have heard Mr. Sunil Awasthi, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr. Gautam Sood, learned Deputy Advocate General, for the respondent-State.

4. Mr Sunil Awasthi, learned counsel for the petitioner, submitted that there is a distinction between a false promise to marry a person and a breach of promise to marry due to circumstances beyond the control of a person. The FIR does not show that the promise made by the petitioner was false from the beginning without any intention to fulfil it. Therefore, he prayed that the present petition be allowed and the FIR be quashed. He relied upon the judgments of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Pramod Suryabhan Pawar Vs. State of Maharashtra, 2019 (9) SCC 608 and Mahesh Damu Khare v. State of Maharashtra, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3471 in support of his submission.

5. Mr Gautam Sood, learned Deputy Advocate General, for the respondent-State submitted that the contents of the FIR disclose the commission of rape. Therefore, he prayed that the present petition be dismissed.

6. I have given considerable thought to the submissions made at the bar and have gone through the records carefully.

7. The law relating to quashing of FIR was explained by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in B.N. John v. State of U.P., 2025 SCC OnLine SC 7 as under: -

“7. As far as the quashing of criminal cases is concerned, it is now more or less well settled as regards the principles to be applied by the court. In this regard, one may refer to the decision of this Court in State of Haryana v. Ch. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, wherein this Court has summarized some of the principles under which FIR/complaints/criminal cases could be quashed in the following words:

“102. In the backdrop of the interpretation of the various relevant provisions of the Code under Chapter XIV and of the principles of law enunciated by this Court in a series of decisions relating to the exercise of the extraordinary power under Article 226 or the inherent powers under Section 482 of the Code which we have extracted and reproduced above, we give the following categories of cases by way of illustration wherein such power could be exercised either to prevent abuse of the process of any court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice, though it may not be possible to lay down any precise, clearly defined and sufÏciently channelised and inflexible guidelines or rigid formulae and to give an exhaustive list of myriad kinds of cases wherein such power should be exercised.

(1) Where the allegations made in the first information report or the complaint, even if they are taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not prima facie constitute any offence or make out a case against the accused.

(2) Where the allegations in th