REASONS FOR NOT MARRYING THOUGH INTENTION TO BE GOOD

Genuine intention under family pressure: In these cases though accused is ready for marriage but due to family pressure he is not able to marry the prosecutrix. The parent forces the accused not to marry the prosecutrix in such cases one cannot say that the intention is malafide. In Deelip Singh @ Dilip Kumar v. State of Bihar, Hon’ble Justice P. Venkatarama Reddi & P.P. Naolekar of Supreme Court on 3.11.2004 observed that

Things did not worked out between the couple. There have been instances where a long affair goes wrong as a result of fights or misunderstanding between the couple. Initially they planned to get married but later on it became impossible for them to tolerate each other. This usually happens with live-in relationships. Couple stays together and shares intimate moments even enter into sexual relationship and in initial years they are happy but as time passes and they realize that they are not compatible for each other. Then it is not rationale for them to get married only on the basis that they have entered into sexual relation with each other before marriage as our Indian society sees it to be immoral

"...there is no question that the convicted kept his commitment to marry her, that was the primary motivation for the victimized girl to consent to physical intercourse with man.". Girl was also overjoyed to marrying him, as she stated explicitly. However, we find no evidence to support a conclusion more than a reasonable belief that the accused seems to have no intention of marrying her from the start and that the commitment he made was fraudulent to his awareness. On the contrary hand, the girl's testimony that "later on," the accused "got ready to marry her but his father and others moved him away from the hamlet" suggests that the accused was inspired by a real intention to marry that did not materialise pursuant to pressure by his family members. It appears to be a violation of the promise of marriage rather than a contractual breach.

Sometimes despite the best of intentions the accused does not marry the girl and this can be due to the fact that he was already married to some other woman which prosecutrix was already aware of. In the beginning he wanted to marry prosecutrix and also thinks of leaving his wife but later on when he realizes that he has responsibility against his wife then his conscience does not allows him to leave her. And as a result he backs out and does not marry prosecutrix

The above said reasons can be used as a defence by the accused where he can be discharged from the liability of rape but will be prosecuted for the offence of cheating for the breach of promise to be more precise. The allegation of rape by a woman is invalid if she had sex with a man even after being aware that she could never marry him. This could be because he was already married, due to religious or caste considerations or because it was paid sex.

In case of Jintu Das v. State, the accused expressed love and affection and promised to marry prosecutrix in order to get her consent for cohabitation. The victim was grown up and knew that their marriage was not feasible as they belonged to different castes but she started cohabitating with the accused and became pregnant. Setting aside the conviction order of High Court it was held that accused was entitled to the acquittal as consent of prosecutrix was not given under misconception of fact.