Knew of his first marriage, stayed seven years: Supreme Court discharges Kerala man in rape and bigamy case
Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan set aside the Kerala High Court and the trial court, hold that a consensual relationship cannot be recast as rape once it ends, and find no case under Sections 376, 420, 493, 494 and 495 IPC.
The Supreme Court on 30 October 2026 discharged a Kerala man accused of rape, cheating and bigamy by a woman he lived with for seven years. A bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan held that a consensual relationship cannot be recast as a crime after it ends.
The bench set aside the Kerala High Court and the trial court, both of which had refused to discharge him.
The judgment, written by Justice Nagarathna and marked reportable, turns on an admission by the complainant herself. The appellant’s brother had told her within months of their 1996 temple ceremony that the man was already married. She stayed with him until 2003.
The Court said the ingredients of Sections 376, 420, 493, 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code were entirely absent, and that the probability of the offences having been committed was non-existent.
Temple ceremony, then five rounds of litigation
The complainant, respondent No. 2, had been divorced from an earlier marriage when she became acquainted with Santhosh Kumar N.P. Her case was that he described himself as a bachelor and offered marriage. In 1996 they travelled to Mysuru and went through a ceremony at a temple.
They lived together as a married couple until 2003. She said she consented to sexual relations on many occasions on the presumption of a valid marriage.
In 2008, alleging neglect, she moved a Kozhikode magistrate under Section 12(1) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, seeking alternate accommodation and money. In those proceedings the appellant disclosed that he was already married with two children. The complaint was dismissed on 31 August 2009, and the appeal failed.
She then filed a private complaint before the Additional Chief Magistrate, Thalassery, under Sections 376, 420, 493, 494 and 495 IPC. It was dismissed for non-prosecution on 4 April 2011; a revision against that order is still pending.
A second private complaint on similar allegations was referred to Kadirur Police under Section 156(3) CrPC, and FIR No. 503 of 2011 was registered. The appellant’s petition under Section 482 to quash it was disposed of on 19 November 2013 with a direction to the trial court to decide his discharge application quickly.
On 9 January 2015 the Additional District and Sessions Judge, Thalassery, dismissed the discharge application and a challenge to territorial jurisdiction, finding a prima facie case. An application for further investigation was also dismissed.
What the Kerala High Court held
The appellant’s revision and his petition against the refusal of further investigation were dismissed together by the High Court on 21 May 2025. It found that he had misrepresented himself as a bachelor and induced the complainant to believe she was in a subsisting marriage.
Consent under a misconception of fact, the High Court said, amounts to rape under Section 376, and six years of cohabitation would not nullify the initial fraudulent inducement. It relied on statements of the complainant and the appellant’s wife, bank statements and income tax records, and called the plea for further investigation a delay tactic.
The Supreme Court issued notice on 18 July 2025 and stayed the sessions trial, S.C. No. 371 of 2013.
What each side argued about consent
Senior Counsel R. Basant appeared for the appellant; Advocate-on-Record K. Rajeev for the complainant.
Basant argued that the complainant was a mature adult who understood the relationship, which was consensual and lasted nearly seven years. The domestic violence case came five years after it ended and failed for want of proof of any marriage.
His sharpest point was her own record in the domestic violence proceedings: the appellant’s brother had told her within nine months of the ceremony that he was already married. She continued to live with him regardless. She could not even identify the temple, and no witness proved the marriage.
The prosecution, he said, was an abuse of process, brought to exact revenge and to pressure the appellant financially, and a second complaint had been filed only by suppressing the first.
Rajeev replied that the first complaint had been dismissed for non-prosecution, not on merits, so a second was not barred, and that the second had become a police case with a chargesheet. The complainant, he said, had stayed on the strength of the appellant’s reassurances that his brother was lying.
He pointed to IVF treatment records in which the appellant signed as husband, a lease for the Mysuru house bearing his signature, and a joint Post Office savings account. The delay, he said, was because she had been isolated in Mysuru and kept from contacting anyone.
The discharge test under Section 227
“whether the allegations contained in FIR No.503 of 2011 disclose sufficient material to warrant the continuance of criminal proceedings as against the appellant herein or whether he is liable to be discharged” (para 24)
That, the Court said, was the only question. It set out Section 227 CrPC and the principles from Union of India v. Prafulla Kumar Samal, (1979) 3 SCC 4, and Sajjan Kumar v. Central Bureau of Investigation, (2010) 9 SCC 368.
A judge may sift and weigh the evidence for the limited purpose of seeing whether a prima facie case exists. He may not conduct a roving enquiry as if holding the trial.
Where the material discloses grave suspicion that is unexplained, a charge follows. Where two views are equally possible and the material raises only suspicion, the accused may be discharged. The judge is not a post office for the prosecution.
What is assessed, Justice Nagarathna wrote, is the probability or likelihood that the accused committed the offence, not proof beyond reasonable doubt. No threshold can be fixed for how improbable the prosecution version must be; it is an individuated act of reasoning.
Repeated rape clause not for long relationships
The relevant provision was Section 376(2)(n), which punishes rape committed repeatedly on the same woman with at least ten years, extendable to life. The word repeatedly denotes separate acts at different times, not a single transaction. Genuine cases show an initial assault followed by acts under fear, pressure, captivity or continued deceit.
Here the FIR and statements showed cohabitation from 1996 to 2003 after what was described as a marriage ceremony. The complainant was told of the prior marriage early on and voluntarily stayed. The only question was whether the physical relationship was procured by deception or a false promise.
She did not deny that the brother told her within a few months. The Court found it untenable that she went on believing herself the legal wife on the strength of oral reassurances. This was a consensual relationship, perhaps camouflaged as a marriage to avoid stigma, that eventually ended.
A relationship turning sour, the Court said, cannot convert earlier consensual acts into rape. That would be “putting the cart before the horse”.
A worrying trend, and a note of caution
The bench recorded a worrying trend of ended relationships being retrospectively combed for what can be construed as sexual assault. Consent absent from the outset because of deceit must be distinguished from regret over past consent after a relationship fails. Such hindsight cannot make a consensual relationship a crime.
Treating it otherwise denudes the man of all agency, since being in a relationship once would bind him for fear of a later rape charge. A man has the right to withdraw, and withdrawal is not deceit or fraud.
Rape, the Court said, must be reserved for real sexual violence, coercion or manipulation of consent. Converting every failed relationship into a rape case dilutes the gravity of the offence and subjects the accused to irreparable stigma. Courts must view the relationship as a whole, not from its end.
The Court also sounded a caution. Rape remains heavily underreported, and for every misuse there are several cases that never surface. Genuine cases must be pursued with vigour. But the system must not become a tool of vengeance, and settlements often come with large sums borne by the male accused.
A woman who consents on the explicit basis of marriage may have her consent vitiated if she was genuinely kept in the dark about an earlier marriage, the bench said. Such cases exist, and Sections 376, 493, 494 and 495 must not become illusory for them. The application must turn on facts, not moral presumptions.
Cheating and bigamy counts also fail
Section 420 requires deceit that induces delivery of property or the making, altering or destruction of a valuable security as defined in Section 30 IPC. There was not a whisper of any property delivered or security altered, even taking the allegation of deception at face value.
Section 493 punishes a man who by deceit causes a woman to believe she is lawfully married to him and to cohabit on that belief. The complainant admitted knowing of his marriage within six months, in 1996, and made no attempt to leave.
That conduct, the Court said, is highly suggestive of a consensual relationship, not of cohabitation in the belief of a lawful marriage.
The IVF signatures and joint account suggested a long-standing personal relationship, not a marriage. For Sections 494 and 495, which punish a void second marriage and its concealment, no valid marriage was shown even prima facie.
In the domestic violence proceedings she could not recall the temple’s name despite years in Mysuru. She said a thali was tied, but nothing showed the other rituals needed for a valid Hindu marriage, and the priest’s statement gave no details.
The relationship, the Court concluded, was akin to a domestic relationship in the nature of marriage, not a marriage in the eyes of law.
The Court added that it was not sitting in moral judgment. Adults may make decisions wise or unwise, with consequences sometimes deeply hurtful, but those do not automatically become crimes. “Criminal law cannot be used as munitions to settle personal scores”, it held.
Order
The High Court order of 21 May 2025 and the orders of the trial court of 9 January 2015 are set aside. The appellant’s discharge application is allowed, and he stands discharged of the offences under Sections 376, 420, 493, 494 and 495 IPC alleged in FIR No. 503 of 2011.
The appeals, arising from SLP (Criminal) Nos. 10173-10174 of 2025, are allowed. The sessions trial, S.C. No. 371 of 2013, had been stayed by the Supreme Court on 18 July 2025 pending these appeals.