In a recent bail order, Justice S. Vishwajith Shetty made an observation that cuts to the heart of how criminal law understands consent, deception, and the fragile line between a broken promise and a punishable act. The case involved a man accused under Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which is India’s new criminal code that replaced the old Indian Penal Code. This particular provision was designed to address a troubling and very common situation: a man who persuades a woman to have sex by promising to marry her, all while having no real intention of ever going through with the wedding. But in this case, the judge found a fundamental problem with the accusation. The promise to marry, as alleged by the prosecution, came only after the sexual act had already taken place. And if that is true, the judge reasoned, then the promise could not have been the thing that induced her consent. It was, in a sense, an afterthought, not a trap. The court therefore granted bail to the accused, not because the man was declared innocent, but because the specific legal ingredients of Section 69 did not appear to be present at the very threshold of the case.
To understand why the judge’s words matter, it helps to look at what Section 69 of the BNS actually tries to do. The law punishes a person who has sexual intercourse with a woman “by deceitful means or by making promise to marry a woman without intention of fulfilling the same,” provided that the act does not amount to the full offence of rape. The punishment can extend up to ten years and a fine. This provision was introduced to fill a gray area that had long troubled Indian courts. Under traditional rape law, consent is invalid if it is given under a misconception of fact, such as a false promise of marriage. But courts have also said that not every broken promise is rape. Sometimes a man genuinely intends to marry a woman at the time of the relationship, but later changes his mind. That is a moral failure, perhaps, but not necessarily a criminal one. Section 69 was meant to catch a different kind of predator: the person who never intended to marry, who deliberately weaponized the idea of marriage to get what he wanted, and who treated the promise as a disposable tool rather than a commitment. The law is essentially saying that using marriage as bait, when you have already made up your mind to abandon the bait later, is a form of deception that deserves serious punishment.
But the judge’s ruling highlights that timing is not a technicality; it is everything. The prosecution’s case, as presented for the purpose of the bail application, appeared to be that the man had sex with the woman first, and only afterwards did he promise to marry her. If that is the sequence of events, then the promise came too late to be the cause of the sexual act. It could not have been the “deceitful means” that persuaded her to consent, because she had already consented before the promise was even made. The judge explained this by pointing directly at the language of the law: for Section 69 to apply, a person must have sexual intercourse with a woman by deceitful means or by making a promise to marry without intending to fulfill it. The words “by” and “by making” imply a causal connection. The promise must be the bait. It must precede the act and operate on the woman’s mind at the moment she decides to say yes. A promise made after the fact is not a cause; it is a reaction. It may be a lie, and it may be hurtful, but it is not the same as using a false promise to obtain consent in the first place. The judge’s analogy, though not explicitly stated, is almost like saying: you cannot claim you were tricked into buying a house because the seller offered you a gift basket after the papers were signed.
This distinction is especially important at the bail stage, because a court does not conduct a full trial when deciding whether to grant bail. The judge’s job is narrower: to determine whether there is a prima facie case, that is, whether the allegations, if taken at face value, make out the offence. If the facts alleged by the prosecution do not satisfy the essential requirements of the law, then keeping a person in jail pending trial becomes hard to justify. Bail, after all, is supposed to be the rule and not the exception in Indian criminal law, particularly when the accused is not seen as a flight risk or a danger to society. By granting bail, the court was not saying that the accused is innocent. It was saying that the story told by the prosecution, at least at this preliminary stage, does not fit neatly into the legal definition of the crime. The woman still has every right to pursue her case, and the trial may still reveal a different set of facts. Perhaps the promise was made before the act and the prosecution simply failed to present it clearly at the bail stage. Perhaps there were other forms of deceit at play. But the law demands that a person be charged with the right crime, based on facts that actually support the charge, and the judge’s order reflects that discipline.
There is also a deeper human story behind this legal reasoning, one that deserves to be told without jargon. Many women across India have found themselves in relationships where a man says “I will marry you” to overcome her hesitation, only to walk away later, leaving her shattered, socially stigmatized, and emotionally scarred. The law now recognizes that such behavior can be a serious crime when the promise was a lie from the start. But there are also cases where two adults become intimate in the course of a relationship, where feelings are real but complicated, where promises are made in the heat of passion and then broken under the pressure of family, finances, or fear. Not every sad ending is a crime. The judge’s observation reminds us that criminal law is a blunt instrument. It cannot punish every lie, every betrayal, or every change of heart. It can only punish lies that are told as weapons, with a specific intention to deceive, and with a direct link to the act. By insisting that the promise must come before the act, the court is drawing a line between seduction and fraud. Seduction may involve exaggeration, persuasion, and emotional pressure, but fraud involves a false promise that was never meant to be kept, delivered precisely to secure consent.
Ultimately, this judgment is a reminder that the law lives in the details. It is easy to say that a man who promised marriage and then left a woman should be punished. It is much harder to determine whether that promise was a calculated lie or a sincere intention that later changed. The judge’s ruling does not close the door on Section 69 cases; it simply says that the door must be opened with the right key. The promise must be shown to have existed before the intimacy, and the prosecution must show that the man never intended to fulfill it even at the moment he made it. That is a difficult thing to prove, but it is exactly what the law demands. For the woman involved, this ruling may feel like a betrayal, as if the system is minimizing her pain. But the law is not saying she was not hurt. It is saying that criminal liability cannot be based on a story that, as told, lacks the necessary sequence. The judge’s words, though legalistic on their surface, carry a deeper message for everyone: promises matter, but so do the circumstances around them. A promise made after the act cannot be the reason the act happened. And while that may be a painful truth in some cases, it is the only way to ensure that the law remains fair, predictable, and rooted in evidence rather than outrage. In a world where emotions often blur the facts, the court’s job is to keep the timeline straight.