Sex on false promise of marriage is rape: Delhi High Court

Sex on false promise of marriage is rape: Delhi High Court
http://www.unp.me/f46/sex-on-false-promise-of-marriage-is-rape-court-67893/
Feb 5, 2010
NEW DELHI: Declining bail to a man who allegedly raped his fiancee and later refused to marry her, the Delhi high court said on Monday courts need to take a strict view of such cases.

Justice V K Jain refused to grant bail to the man, Nishant (name changed), who had filed a petition for anticipatory bail in a case where he is accused of raping a girl who was approved by his family and had even got enagaged to him.

"If a girl surrenders herself to a boy who comes in contact with her for the first time only in connection with a proposal for her marriage and then enters into a formal ceremony of engagement..she does it not because she loves him or wants to have pleasure with him, but because she doesn't want to disappoint her future husband,'' the HC held, rejecting the argument of the accused that it was consensual sex.

The HC said if a view was taken that persuading a girl to have physical relations on the false promise of marriage, despite having no such intention, does not constitute rape, "this will amount to putting premium on a conduct which is not only highly reprehensible and abhorable but also criminal in nature.''