A consensual relationship, even under promise of marriage, may not constitute rape if consent is given freely without coercion.

ORDER

Dated : 6^th February, 2026 The petitioner is the sole accused in S.C.1075/2024 on the file of the Additional Sessions Court (Violence Against Women & Children), Ernakulam, arising out of crime No.2262/2023 of Fort Kochi police station filed this petition under S.528 BNSS praying for quashing all further proceedings against him. The offence alleged against the petitioner is under Section 376 (2)

(n) IPC .

2. The prosecution case is that the accused with the intention to satisfy his sexual lust, after promising to marry the de facto complainant committed rape upon her repeatedly and thereafter refused to marry her. 3. According to the learned counsel for the petitioner, even if the entire allegations levelled against the petitioner are believed as such, the same will not constitute the offence punishable under Section 376 IPC . Therefore, he prayed for quashing all further proceedings against the petitioner.

4. The petition was strongly opposed by the learned counsel for the de facto complainant/2^nd respondent as well as by the learned Public Prosecutor.

5. Admittedly, the petitioner is a Priest. From the FI statement it is revealed that at the time of the alleged incident, the de facto complainant was a divorcee and the mother of a student of Plus One. As per the FI statement, since June 2018, the petitioner and the de facto complainant became friends. They used to chat through Facebook and Messenger and met together for the first time at Lulu Mall on 29.11.2018. The petitioner promised to abandon his priesthood and to marry the de facto complainant. He also insisted on having a physical relationship with her. On 16.12.2018 at the instance of the petitioner, she accompanied the petitioner to Fort Kochi and they had taken a room in a home stay and on that day, they had a physical relationship. Thereafter they regularly met at different places in different hotels and had physical relation with each other till August 2023. As per the FI statement, on 17.8.2023 the petitioner left, promising to return after giving up the priesthood, but thereafter he did not return.

6. The version of the petitioner is that thereafter he met with a serious accident on 16.9.2023 and sustained severe head injury. According to him, even now he is under treatment at Jubilee Mission hospital and undergoing psychiatric treatment for memory loss. In the meantime, the de facto complainant filed W.P.(Crl).957/2023 before this Court alleging that the petitioner is under illegal detention. However, after getting convinced that he is not under illegal detention, this Court dismissed the Writ Petition. Further, according to the petitioner, the attempt of the de facto complainant is only to pressurize him to yield to her demand for money.

7. In the decision in Prashant v. State of NCT of Delhi , (2025) 5 SCC 764 , after referring to two earlier decisions, the Apex Court in paragraph

23 held that :

“Recently this Court in XXXX vs. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2024) 3 SCC 496 held that when the relationship between the parties was purely consensual and when the complainant was aware of the consequences of her actions, the ingredients of the offence of rape were not made out. Similarly, in Pramod Suryabhan Pawar v. State of Maharashtra, (2019) 9 SCC 608 arising out of identical facts, this Court has enumerated the following:

“18. To summarise the legal position that emerges from the above cases, the “consent” of a woman with respect to Section 375 must involve an active and reasoned deliberation towards the proposed act. To establish whether the “consent” was vitiated by a “misconception of fact” arising out of a promise to marry, two propositi