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

The growing tendency to invoke the criminal process in private relationship disputes must be checked, for the criminal law cannot be permitted to become a means for settling personal or emotional disputes, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has observed.

Justice B. Pugalendhi observed that of late, the court had witnessed an increase in complaints of this nature where relationships voluntarily entered into were subsequently projected as instances of deception or breach of promise. Such matters, rooted in personal association and mutual choice, do not ordinarily warrant criminal prosecution.

The court was hearing a petition filed by an advocate who sought the quashing of a case pending against him on the file of the Judicial Magistrate III, Dindigul. The case of the prosecution was that he was in a relationship with a woman. The woman lodged a complaint against him on the grounds that they were in a physical relationship, on the pretext that he was going to marry her. However, he had refused to marry her. Dindigul All Women Police Station (Rural) registered a case against the man.

The court observed that there was no material to suggest that the petitioner had a fraudulent or malafide intent at the inception of the relationship. The allegations indicate, at best, a breakdown of a consensual relationship, which by itself cannot attract the penal provisions of Section 69 of the BNS.

The court is conscious of the prevailing social realities. It is a matter of fact that, in present times, instances of premarital intimacy between consenting adults are not uncommon.

This court makes this observation not to endorse or moralise such conduct, but to acknowledge the changing contours of personal relationships in contemporary society. The line between emotional attachment and physical relationship is often indistinct, and when such relationships end in discord, competing narratives frequently emerge about what transpired in private, the court observed.

What is transpiring between them is within the realm of personal choice. Whether the relationship was founded on affection, expectation of marriage, or mere mutual pleasure is known only to them. It is neither possible nor appropriate for a court to conclusively determine such matters.

The criminal process cannot be used to moralise private conduct or convert personal disappointment into litigation, as courts deal with legality, not morality. The law intervenes only where consent is vitiated by coercion, deception, or incapacity, the court observed.

In the present case, both the petitioner and the defacto complainant are educated adults who consciously entered into a relationship of intimacy.

What transpired between them was a matter of their personal choice. Having exercised that choice, it is not open to either to later portray private discord as criminal misconduct. The law is not an instrument for resolving emotional fallouts or for attributing moral blame arising from consensual acts between adults, the court observed. The court quashed the proceedings pending before the trial court.