Indian criminal law, under s 69 of India’s new Penal Code (BNS), classifies ‘promise-to-marry’ sexual intercourse as a special offence. The offence is committed where a man promises marriage to a woman with the intention of securing her consent to sexual intercourse and not intending to conclude the marriage. Recent comments by the Indian Supreme Court (SCI) on ‘promise-to-marry’ rape cases have revealed the deep flaws in how Indian society and judiciary understand and value sexual consent. In this blog, I use two recent cases to argue that Indian Courts understand ‘promise-to-marry’ cases in ways that reinforce patriarchal beliefs about women’s sexual sanctity and should instead adopt an approach centred on women’s autonomy.

A man’s promise of marriage holds significant strength in the Indian socio-cultural context, since sexual intimacy outside of marriage is shamed at best and punished (by families/communities) at worst. A woman’s consent to sexual relations, therefore, may be significantly rooted in the prospect of marriage.

The criminalisation of a false ‘promise-to-marry’ is a legal acknowledgement of this cultural reality. The principle was originally developed by Courts through precedents, and eventually came to be enacted into s 69 of the BNS. However, recent judicial interpretations of the offence seem to lose sight of why such acts need to be categorised as rape.

In May 2026, SCI in Shaileshbhai Govindbhai Makwana v The State Of Maharashtra quashed criminal proceedings in a ‘promise-to-marry’ case instituted by a woman against a man who had promised to marry her, secured sexual relations, and later retracted the proposal to marry. The complainant woman was in the midst of her divorce case when she met the accused on a matrimonial website. She grew intimate (emotionally and sexually) with the accused and continued in a relationship for a few years. Once her divorce came through, the man refused to marry her even though he had promised to do so earlier in their relationship. The aggrieved woman then filed a case of false promise-to-marry.

When the accused approached the Court to quash the case against him, facts that the woman had created an account on the matrimonial website while her divorce case hadn’t yet concluded, and had become intimate with the accused before marrying him, went in favour of the accused. The Court reasoned that a ‘deceptive’ sexual relationship was not apparent, and rather that the case was instituted once the relationship ‘soured’, implying that it was a revenge plot for a scorned woman. The Court neglected to mention that divorce cases often take a long time to conclude, and a legitimate prospect of a new partner and marriage may arise in the meantime.

Similarly, in the earlier case of Yashwinder Kumar vs The State Govt of NCT of Delhi in February 2026, the SCI expressed its concern about women entering into sexual relationships prior to marriage. This oral remark came during the hearing of a bail application filed by the accused in a ‘promise-to-marry’ rape case. The complainant woman also met the accused man on a matrimonial website and entered into sexual relations under a promise of marriage. Later, however, she came to realise that he married another woman in 2024. The SCI granted him bail and took the opportunity to express its disdain for pre-marital sexual relations, with the Judge saying that they may be ‘old-fashioned’ but are unable to appreciate pre-marital sexual relations. While the Court’s comment would have no bearing on the merits of the case itself, the stance of the apex Court is alarming.

These cases indicate a misunderstanding of why ‘promise-to-marry’ rape cases are criminalised. Courts seem to perceive that the offence is intended to protect the pre-marital sexual sanctity (or at least marital sexual exclusivity) of women towards their intended husbands, such that if a man promises to marry her and later retracts, the consequential ‘loss’ of her sexual purity/exclusivity is addressed by the offence. Rather, Courts must realise that such acts are offences due to obtaining consent by deception, thus vitiating the woman’s sexual autonomy: the foundations on which she consented were false, and the man who deliberately misled her needs to be accountable under criminal law.

Such an approach, centred on women’s sexual autonomy, would ensure that the provision is used to protect women’s sexual agency while dispelling stereotypes of sex and marriage. The offence is not intended to ensure that marriage necessarily follows sex, but rather to ensure that cultural vulnerabilities are not weaponised by men to deceive women into sex.