Sex using ‘deceitful means’: Why in case after case, courts are quashing Section 69

In their orders, the Karnataka and Madras High Courts have spotlighted the “misuse” of Section 69.

On February 24, staying criminal investigation against a man accused under Section 69 by a woman he met on the dating app Bumble, Justice M Nagaprasanna of the Karnataka High Court noted that arrests in these cases are “mushrooming”. After years of consensual relationship, a “crime” is alleged and the man sent to jail, the court said, “on the score that (the) petitioner has had sexual intercourse with the complainant deceitfully on promise of marriage”.

On November 12, 2025, the Madras High Court made similar observations while quashing a case involving two law graduates who had been in a relationship from 2020 to 2025. “Law intervenes only where consent is vitiated by coercion, deception or incapacity… The criminal process cannot be used to moralise private conduct or convert personal disappointment into litigation, as courts deal with legality, not morality,” the High Court’s Justice B Pugalendhi ruled.

Calling for a check on the “growing tendency to invoke criminal process in private relationship disputes”, Justice Pugalendhi said law “cannot be permitted to become a means for settling personal or emotional disputes”.

The Supreme Court’s stand on multiple occasions has been that if the consent for sexual intercourse is obtained under a misconception of fact, such as a false promise to marry, the consent can be considered legally invalid, but that a mere breach of promise does not amount to a false promise.

Take the case of Mahesh Damu Khare vs State of Maharashtra, involving a nine-year relationship. Quashing criminal proceedings in November 2024, the Supreme Court held that for a man to be held criminally liable, the physical relationship must be traceable directly to a false promise made in bad faith from the very inception. “Such a prolonged continuation of physical relationship without demurral or remonstration by the female partner, in effect takes out the sting of criminal culpability and neutralises it,” Justice B V Nagarathna said in her order.

She added: “It is evident from the large number of cases decided by this Court… that there is a worrying trend that consensual relationships going on for prolonged periods, upon turning sour, have been sought to be criminalised by invoking criminal jurisprudence.”

In November 2025, hearing the Samadhan vs State of Maharashtra case, the Supreme Court reiterated this. The case stemmed from a three-year relationship, and involved a married woman. Quashing the chargesheet, another Bench led by Justice Nagarathna stated that “physical intimacy occurring during the course of a functioning relationship cannot be retrospectively branded as the offence of rape merely because the relationship failed to culminate in marriage”.

Again, the Court took note of “the disquieting tendency wherein failed or broken relationships are given the colour of criminality”. It added that the “misuse of the criminal justice machinery in this regard is a matter of profound concern and calls for condemnation”.

Last month, the Allahabad High Court quashed an FIR under Section 69 in Neelesh Ramchandani vs State of UP. The case involved the cancellation of a marriage arranged between parties due to differences. A Division Bench of the High Court observed that there was a genuine agreement to marry and no false promise from either side. “We are of the view that Section 69 of BNS punishes deceit and not disappointment,” the court held.

Courts have also taken the duration of the relationship into account in their evaluation of the cases. In May 2025, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed an FIR under Section 69. The court noted that the couple had been in a physical relationship since 2021 and had a child together. The judge reasoned that had it been a case “in which relationship developed once or twice and (the) prosecutrix restrained the applicant from further developing physical relationship between them, asking him to first fulfill the promise of marriage, then it would have been a case of false promise of marriage”.

The prolonged relationship indicated “mutual consent” rather than a false pretext, the court said.

Courts have also thrown out cases where a legal marriage between the parties was impossible to begin with. In July 2025, the Kerala High Court granted bail to a man accused under Section 69, noting that the complainant was a married woman. When both parties were aware of her marriage, there could not be a legally valid promise of marriage, the court said, making it “doubtful” that there had been an offence of deceitful sexual intercourse.

Similarly, the Delhi High Court in July last year dealt with a case where a couple had been in a live-in relationship for 15 years, despite the man being legally married to someone else. The woman eventually filed an FIR under Section 69 due to what she later admitted was “a misunderstanding and certain emotional and medical difficulties”.

While the High Court agreed to quash the FIR based on a compromise between the parties, it imposed a cost of Rs 20,000 on the woman, warning that “the process of law cannot be invoked casually or without due consideration”.