Overview
- A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan on February 5 set aside the Chhattisgarh High Court’s refusal to quash and scrapped the FIR, charge sheet, and pending sessions case from Bilaspur.
- The judges found the essential ingredients of Section 376(2)(n) of the IPC were not established even assuming the allegations at face value.
- Any promise to marry a person with a living spouse is void under Section 5(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, the judgment clarified.
- Both parties are practising lawyers, and the 33-year-old complainant was not viewed as naive or unaware of the legal bar on bigamy.
- Warning of misuse, the court cautioned against turning failed consensual relationships into rape prosecutions, calling the trend a matter of “profound concern.”