The Karnataka High Court has drawn a firm line between regret and crime, quashing a rape case filed by a woman against a 23-year-old man she met on the dating app Bumble.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna, while setting aside the case, observed that the relationship was “clearly consensual,” and that the digital trail — though “not in good taste” — spoke for itself. The court found no evidence to suggest that the encounter, which began as a mutual meeting arranged via the app, amounted to a criminal act.
The pair had connected a year earlier through Bumble, kept in touch on Instagram, and decided to meet in person in August. According to the woman’s police complaint, they went to a hotel after he picked her up from her residence. She claimed that she withdrew consent when he began making sexual advances, but that he ignored her and proceeded with intercourse. She later visited a hospital and filed a complaint under Section 64 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The accused countered that everything between them had been voluntary, submitting that the police had overlooked the private chats that revealed a consensual relationship. The State, however, urged the court not to dismiss the case prematurely, arguing that the matter should be tested at trial.
The High Court disagreed. Relying on Supreme Court precedents distinguishing consensual intimacy from coercion, Justice Nagaprasanna ruled that continuing the prosecution would amount to “a ritualistic procession towards miscarriage of justice.”
“A relationship born of mutual volition, even if it founders in disappointment, cannot, save in the clearest of cases, be transmuted into an offence,” the order declared.
With that, the court closed the case — a reminder, it said implicitly, that the courtroom is not the place to litigate heartbreak.
