HC quashes rape complaint against man

The Bombay High Court has quashed a complaint lodged against a 47-year-old man accusing him cheating and raping a 49-year-old woman after a false promise marriage.

A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Anuja Prabhudessai, while recently quashing the complaint against Dubai resident Nandan Bendarkar, observed that this was not a case of breach of promise and trust and that the proposed marriage between the accused and the complainant was cancelled due to other reasons.

Bendarkar had filed a petition before the High Court seeking to quash the rape and cheating case lodged against him in Pune in 2013 by the woman with whom he was to get married.

According to police, the victim and the accused, both divorcees, had registered themselves on a matrimonial site in search of prospective partners.

The duo contacted each other online in April, 2012 and met on several occasions in Pune, Mumbai and Dubai. After these meetings, the duo decided to get married.

It is alleged that during the period between June 2012 to October 2012, the accused kept physical relationship with the victim by promising to marry her. The case of the victim is that her consent to get physically intimate was obtained by giving false promise of marriage.

After October 2012, differences cropped up between the duo over the ex-wife of the accused visiting his home in Dubai. "The complainant found the limited relationship that the accused had with his ex-wife for whatever reasons to be objectionable and asked him not to meet her. The accused was not agreeable to the strict conditions as a result of which the mutual plan to get married was frustrated," the court said. After perusing the case, the court observed that the facts unequivocally show that the accused was serious in getting married to the complainant. "By no stretch of imagination, from the material on record, it can be said that the promise given by the accused to the complainant to marry was false. In our considered view, this is also not a case of breach of promise. At the most it can be said this is a case of cancellation of marriage," the court said.