The Supreme Court on Monday made pointed oral observations on the limits of trust in pre-marital relationships while hearing the bail plea of a man accused of rape on the basis of a false promise of marriage.
A bench comprising Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan remarked that, in the Court’s view, a man and a woman are “strangers” before marriage and that there must be circumspection before entering into a physical relationship on the strength of a promise alone.
“Maybe we are old-fashioned, but before marriage a boy and a girl are strangers… We fail to understand how they can be indulging in a physical relationship before marriage. You must be very careful; nobody should believe anybody before marriage,” Justice Nagarathna observed during the hearing.
The case arises from a complaint filed by a woman, around 30 years old, who said she met the petitioner on a matrimonial website in 2022. According to the prosecution, the man assured her that he would marry her and, on that basis, allegedly established physical relations with her on multiple occasions in Delhi and later in Dubai. The complainant has further alleged that, at his insistence, she travelled to Dubai, where he again had physical relations with her on the pretext of marriage, secretly recorded intimate videos without her consent, and threatened to circulate them if she resisted.
The woman later discovered that the man was already married and had, in fact, married another woman on January 19, 2024, in Punjab. These allegations led to the registration of a case, and both the Sessions Court and the Delhi High Court had earlier refused to grant him bail.
During the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Nagarathna questioned why the complainant chose to travel to Dubai to meet the petitioner. When the government counsel responded that the two had met on a matrimonial website and were planning to marry, the judge remarked that if the woman was particular about marriage, she should not have travelled to meet him before it. The bench went on to suggest that such disputes may not be well-suited for criminal trial and conviction where the relationship was consensual in nature, and proposed that the parties be referred to mediation.
“These are not cases which are to be tried and convicted when there is a consensual relationship,” Justice Nagarathna said, adding that the matter could be explored for settlement. The case has now been listed for Wednesday to examine the possibility of mediation.
The petitioner’s bail pleas had earlier been rejected by the lower courts. On November 18, 2025, the Delhi High Court had refused bail, holding that the allegations prima facie suggested the promise of marriage was false from the very beginning, particularly because the petitioner was already married and went on to marry again in January 2024. Relying on established precedents, the High Court had underlined that consent obtained on a false promise of marriage can be vitiated if the promise was made in bad faith and without any real intention to marry.
