Growing tendency to invoke criminal process in private relationship disputes must be checked, says HC

7 months ago 3
ARTICLE AD BOX

The increasing inclination to invoke the transgression process successful backstage narration disputes indispensable beryllium checked, for the transgression instrumentality cannot beryllium permitted to go a means for settling idiosyncratic oregon affectional disputes, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has observed.

Justice B. Pugalendhi observed that of late, the tribunal had witnessed an summation successful complaints of this quality wherever relationships voluntarily entered into were subsequently projected arsenic instances of deception oregon breach of promise. Such matters, rooted successful idiosyncratic relation and communal choice, bash not ordinarily warrant transgression prosecution.

The tribunal was proceeding a petition filed by an advocator who sought the quashing of a lawsuit pending against him connected the record of the Judicial Magistrate III, Dindigul. The lawsuit of the prosecution was that helium was successful a narration with a woman. The pistillate lodged a ailment against him connected the grounds that they were successful a carnal relationship, connected the pretext that helium was going to wed her. However, helium had refused to wed her. Dindigul All Women Police Station (Rural) registered a lawsuit against the man.

The tribunal observed that determination was nary worldly to suggest that the petitioner had a fraudulent oregon malafide intent astatine the inception of the relationship. The allegations indicate, astatine best, a breakdown of a consensual relationship, which by itself cannot pull the penal provisions of Section 69 of the BNS.

The tribunal is conscious of the prevailing societal realities. It is simply a substance of information that, successful contiguous times, instances of premarital intimacy betwixt consenting adults are not uncommon.

This tribunal makes this reflection not to endorse oregon moralise specified conduct, but to admit the changing contours of idiosyncratic relationships successful modern society. The enactment betwixt affectional attachment and carnal narration is often indistinct, and erstwhile specified relationships extremity successful discord, competing narratives often look astir what transpired successful private, the tribunal observed.

What is transpiring betwixt them is wrong the realm of idiosyncratic choice. Whether the narration was founded connected affection, anticipation of marriage, oregon specified communal pleasance is known lone to them. It is neither imaginable nor due for a tribunal to conclusively find specified matters.

The transgression process cannot beryllium utilized to moralise backstage behaviour oregon person idiosyncratic disappointment into litigation, arsenic courts woody with legality, not morality. The instrumentality intervenes lone wherever consent is vitiated by coercion, deception, oregon incapacity, the tribunal observed.

In the contiguous case, some the petitioner and the defacto complainant are educated adults who consciously entered into a narration of intimacy.

What transpired betwixt them was a substance of their idiosyncratic choice. Having exercised that choice, it is not unfastened to either to aboriginal represent backstage discord arsenic transgression misconduct. The instrumentality is not an instrumentality for resolving affectional fallouts oregon for attributing motivation blasted arising from consensual acts betwixt adults, the tribunal observed. The tribunal quashed the proceedings pending earlier the proceedings court.

Published - November 12, 2025 09:21 p.m. IST

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