When love goes sour, it’s not rape: Court rules consensual intimacy can’t be used as ‘tool for vengeance’

“The criminal justice system must, therefore, remain vigilant in maintaining a careful balance between protecting the dignity and rights of victims of sexual offences and preventing misuse of penal provisions in cases arising out of consensual relationships which have subsequently turned sour,” the court said on May 22.

Justice Sanjeeb K Panigrahi noted that the province of criminal law is to protect the citizen from acts perpetrated against his or her will.

Justice Panigrahi noted that allowing “every failed or strained relationship” between consenting adults to transform into a criminal prosecution for rape would run contrary not only to the “constitutional vision of justice, fairness, and due process”, but also to the “true spirit, object, and sanctity” of the sexual offences law.

‘Consensual intimacy can’t brought within ambit of rape’

• The province of criminal law is to protect the citizen from acts perpetrated against his or her will; it is not designed to interpose itself in matters that are, at their very core, the product of mutual and informed agreement between persons of full legal competence.
• The celebrated maxim actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, that an act does not render a man guilty of a crime unless his mind be equally guilty, stands as an immovable pillar of criminal law.
• Where the mental state attending the impugned act is that of mutual and willing participation, and where no evidence of fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, or coercion has been brought to bear upon the Court, the law cannot, consistent with justice and reason, affix the stigma of criminal culpability upon any one party to the exclusion of the other.
• There appears to have been a considerable delay in lodging the FIR.
  The unexplained delay in setting the criminal law into motion assumes significance in the facts and circumstances of the present case and casts a shadow upon the prosecution’s version.
• The medical officer, who examined the victim pursuant to police requisition, has categorically stated in his evidence that no bodily injuries suggestive of forcible sexual intercourse were found on the person of the victim.
• Mere consensual intimacy, arising out of a voluntary relationship between adults, cannot ipso facto be brought within the ambit of the offence of rape unless the essential ingredients constituting absence of free consent are prima facie established.
• The prosecution has conspicuously failed to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, the foundational elements of criminal intent and want of consent that are the very lifeblood of a sustainable criminal charge.
• In the absence of such proof, the benefit of doubt must, as a matter of settled and unimpeachable legal principle, endure in favour of the appellant.

‘Appellant and informant are persons of majority’

• The allegation of the respondent is that the appellant had trespassed into the house with the intention to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment for life.
• Upon a meticulous and dispassionate scrutiny of the entire conspectus of evidence placed before this Court, and upon a holistic appreciation of all the attending facts and circumstances of the case.
• This Court is of the considered and deliberate opinion that the cumulative effect of the circumstances so established leads, by an irresistible and inexorable interference, to the conclusion that the acts constituting the subject matter of the present proceedings were, in their essential character and intrinsic nature, consensual, having been actuated by the free, voluntary, and uncoerced volition of both the parties concerned.
• It is an incontrovertible and foundational maxim of criminal jurisprudence, hallowed by centuries of legal tradition and affirmed by a long and unbroken catena of judicial authority, that volenti non fit injuria, that to which a person freely consents cannot, in law, constitute an injury or a wrong visited upon that person.
• It is an undisputed position on record that both the appellant and the informant are persons of majority, having attained the age prescribed under law, and are, by every reasonable standard, sufficiently mature, intellectually discerning, and emotionally competent individuals, fully possessed of the capacity to comprehend, appreciate, and evaluate the nature, import, and inevitable consequences of their respective acts and conduct.
• Neither party laboured under any incapacity, infirmity of understanding, or vitiation of will.
  Each was, accordingly, endowed with the full legal and moral competence to exercise autonomous judgment and to extend or withhold consent as a matter of their own sovereign volition.

A case of alleged rape

The case arose from an incident on May 21, 2022, where the informant alleged that the appellant broke into her home at 2.00 am. It was alleged that about 3 to 4 days before the occurrence, the accused had telephonically threatened the informant, stating that he would commit rape upon her on some day.

Thereafter, upon completion of the investigation, the investigating Agency submitted a charge-sheet against the appellant for the alleged commission of offences punishable under Section 450 and 376(1) of IPC. Upon conclusion of the trial, the trial court, after appraising and analysing the evidence available on record, found the appellant guilty of the offences punishable under Sections 376(1) and 450 of the IPC and accordingly sentenced him thereunder.
The petitioner has filed the plea before the high court challenging his conviction in the case.

Arguments of parties

Appearing for the appellant, advocate Subodh Kumar Mohanty submitted that the judgment of conviction and order of sentence passed by the trial court, where the appellant has been convicted and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment along with imposition of fine, is wholly erroneous, unsustainable both on facts and in law, and is liable to be set aside.

The appellants further submitted that the trial court has failed to properly appreciate the materials and evidence available on record and thereby erroneously recorded the order of conviction.

It was contended that the trial court below had not applied the cardinal principles of criminal jurisprudence and the settled principles governing the appreciation of evidence, as a result of which the impugned judgment has become legally unsustainable.

Representing the state, Additional Standing Counsel, Gayatri Patra, submitted that the trial court, upon proper appreciation of the oral and documentary evidence available on record, has rightly passed the judgment of conviction and order of sentence against the appellant.

It was vehemently contended on behalf of the Respondent that the prosecution has successfully established the commission of the offence under Section 376(1) (punishment for the offence of rape) and 450 (house-trespass in order to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment for life) of IPC, thereby proving the case beyond all reasonable doubts.