00:00The Karnataka High Court of course blasted the policemen for arresting the brother of a man
00:05who was accused in a promise to marry rape case.
00:08But what is this promise to marry under Indian law
00:11and how do courts define this very, very nebulous provision?
00:20Promise to marry as a facet of rape was created by the courts as a factor of fraudulent consent.
00:29That means that the girl said yes because she genuinely believed
00:33because you told her that you will be marrying her.
00:36So the consent for the sexual relationship was obtained through fraud.
00:41And why is this?
00:43Because in the early 2000s, the Supreme Court and various high courts
00:46looked into the question of consent and the question of intent.
00:50Was the consent given by the woman based solely on the fact that she genuinely believed
00:57that her partner will be marrying her very soon?
01:00And the other side was intent.
01:02Did that man, when he promised marriage, was he intending to lie?
01:08Was he genuinely offering marriage?
01:10Or was the offer of marriage only and only to obtain that fraudulent consent?
01:16After the BNS, the Bharatiya Niai Sahanta came into force,
01:19section 69 specifically has made this an offence that consent for sex obtained through fraud
01:28or false promise is rape.
01:31But what about the persons other than the two who are in that relationship?
01:36Fraud per se or cheating is something that can be abetted.
01:40And therefore, in some cases, if a relationship is such that the boy has told the girl that
01:47he will marry her with zero intention of actually getting married and he has been backed up in
01:52that lie by family or friends or anybody else, that third person could potentially be the
02:00subject of the FIR that this person helped my former partner defraud me.
02:05That is where this entire very nebulous question comes in because every single case of this
02:13kind depends solely on the specific facts and circumstances of each case.
02:18And the courts have been very skeptical at times when accepting this kind of allegations.
02:24The courts look at the duration of a relationship.
02:27They look at the background of the two parties, the girl and the boy.
02:31They look at education, social background, economic background, a lot of factors.
02:35Because maturity, for example, we've recently had a case in the Supreme Court where the
02:39Supreme Court threw out this promise to marry case because the woman in question was already
02:45married.
02:45So therefore, this promise to marry is something that depends very, very clearly on the specific
02:52facts and circumstances of each case.
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