Applying a four-step test, the Supreme Court quashes an FIR and the complaints filed against the complainant too

Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran find a consensual relationship that went sour, with each side then accusing the other, and stop every proceeding on both sides.

A bank customer and a bank employee became acquainted, and the relationship ended in two sets of criminal complaints running in opposite directions. She alleged rape, a promise to marry made to keep her quiet, an assault in a hotel room and threats. He had already lodged two complaints alleging extortion. The Chhattisgarh High Court declined to quash the FIR against him. The Supreme Court has quashed it — and directed that his own complaints not be proceeded with either.

The four steps

The Bench applied the framework it had laid down in Pradeep Kumar Kesarwani v. State of Uttar Pradesh, a case it noted arose in a similar circumstance, where rape was alleged and no complaint was made at the time because of a later promise to marry.

That decision sets out four questions for a High Court asked to quash. Whether the material relied on by the accused is sound, reasonable and indubitable — of sterling and impeccable quality. Whether it would rule out the assertions in the charges, being sufficient to persuade a reasonable person to dismiss the factual basis of the accusations as false. Whether it has not been refuted by the prosecution or complainant, or cannot justifiably be refuted. And whether proceeding with the trial would be an abuse of process and would not serve the ends of justice. If the answer to all four is yes, the judicial conscience of the High Court should persuade it to quash.

Applying them

On the first step, the material produced by the appellant showed money paid by him to the complainant, which he said was extorted, together with the two complaints he had lodged with the jurisdictional police before the FIR against him was registered.

The second step drew the Court's closest attention, and it turns on a distinction that decides many cases of this kind. There was admittedly a courtship. On the complainant's own account she was raped against her will, and the desire to marry was expressed afterwards, to dissuade her from reporting it — a desire she voluntarily and willingly accepted. No allegation was raised that a promise of marriage had been held out beforehand to entice her into a sexual relationship. That matters because the promise-to-marry species of rape depends on consent having been obtained by a false assurance given at the outset. Here the complaint did not allege that, and the allegation of rape was in any event delayed by more than a year and a half.

Nor was the rest of the account reported at the time. The assault said to have occurred in a hotel room was never reported to the police, by the complainant or by the hotel staff who are said to have witnessed it. The alleged threats by the appellant's relatives were not reported either.

The complaint itself set out what it was for. The complainant stated that she wished to marry the appellant, and that she was filing the complaint so that if he did not marry her, punitive action would be taken against him for the sexual exploitation and assault. On the fourth step the Court was of the definite opinion that no purpose would be served by a trial.

Order

Holding that the High Court ought to have exercised its power under Section 482, the Court set aside its order and quashed the charge sheet in the criminal case pending before the Chief Judicial Magistrate at Ambikapur. It directed that no criminal proceedings continue in that case against the appellant or any other accused in the FIR, since the foundation of the allegations is the criminal culpability of the accused in having raped the complainant on a promise of marriage. The allegations of hurt and criminal intimidation against the other accused failed to impress the Court.

It then went further in the other direction. Since the FIR against the appellant had been quashed, his own two complaints need not be proceeded with either. The Bench explained that it passed these consequential directions only because it was convinced there had been a consensual relationship between the parties which went sour, after which each started accusing the other. The appeal was allowed.

That symmetry is the feature worth noting. An accused who succeeds in quashing an FIR ordinarily keeps whatever counter-case he has filed; the two sets of proceedings are formally unrelated and a court deciding one has no occasion to touch the other. Here the Court treated both as products of the same broken relationship and ended them together, which leaves neither side able to say the criminal process vindicated them.

The judgment is short and expressly fact-bound, and it should not be read as a view about delayed complaints in general — delay in reporting a sexual offence is routinely and rightly explained by fear, shame or dependence. What persuaded this Bench was the combination: the sequence in which the promise was alleged to have been made, the absence of any claim that it induced the relationship, the hotel incident that no one at all reported, and a complaint that stated on its face that prosecution was the alternative to marriage.