The question of consent is by far the most important in the case. Of course, such consent may be express or implied. If it is an express consent, a case will seldom be taken to Court. If it is taken to Court, it will have to consider if such consent was likely to have been given by the prosecutrix. Excepting, of course, the case of prostitutes and other mercenaries, women are seldom prone to translate their thoughts in these matters into words. They usually leave the matter of consent to tacit understanding. In such cases consent becomes a matter of inference to be made from evidence of previous or contemporaneous acts and conduct and other surrounding circumstances.1
Rao Harnarain Singh Sheoji Singh vs The State2
(followed in Gopi Shanker And Ors. vs State Of Rajasthan3 )
A mere act of helpless resignation in the face of inevitable compulsion, quiescence, non-resistance, or passive giving in, when volitional faculty is either clouded by fear or vitiated by duress, cannot be deemed to be “consent” as understood in law. Consent, on the part of a woman as a defence to an allegation of rape, requires voluntary participation, not only after the exercise of intelligence, based on the knowledge, of the significance and moral quality of the act, but after having freely exercised a choice between resistance and assent.
Submission of her body under the influence of fear or terror is no consent. There is a difference between consent and submission. Every consent involves a submission but the converse does not follow and a mere act of submission does not involve consent. Consent of the girl in order to relieve an act, of a criminal character, like rape, must be an act of reason, accompanied with deliberation, after the mind has weighed as in a balance, the good and evil on each side, with the existing capacity and power to withdraw the assent according to one’s will or pleasure.
A woman is said to consent, only when she freely agrees to submit herself, while in free and unconstrained possession of her physical and moral power to act in a manner she wanted. Consent implies the exercise of a free and untrammelled right to forbid or withhold what is being consented to; it always is a voluntary and conscious acceptance of what is proposed to be done by another and concurred in by the former.
Sujit Ranjan vs. State 20114
Legal position which can be culled out from the judicial pronouncements referred above is that the consent given by the prosecutrix to have sexual intercourse with whom she is in love, on a promise that he would marry her on a later date, cannot be considered as given under “misconception of fact”. Whether consent given by the prosecutrix to sexual intercourse is voluntary or whether it is given under “misconception of fact” depends on the facts of each case. While considering the question of consent, the Court must consider the evidence before it and the surrounding circumstances before reaching a conclusion. Evidence adduced by the prosecution has to be weighed keeping in mind that the burden is on the prosecution to prove each and every ingredient of the offence Prosecution must lead positive evidence to give rise to inference beyond reasonable doubt that accused had no intention to marry prosecutrix at all from inception and that promise made was false to his knowledge. The failure to keep the promise on a future uncertain date may be on account of variety of reasons and could not always amount to “misconception of fact” right from the inception.
Deepak Gulati vs. State of Haryana5
Consent may be express or implied, coerced or misguided, obtained willingly or through deceit. Consent is an act of reason, accompanied by deliberation, the mind weighing, as in a balance, the good and evil on each side. There is a clear distinction between rape and consensual sex and in a case like this, the court must very carefully examine whether the accused had actually wanted to marry the victim, or had malafide motives, and had made a false promise to this effect only to satisfy his lust, as the latter falls within the ambit of cheating or deception. There is a distinction between the mere breach of a promise, and not fulfilling a false promise. Thus, the court must examine whether there was made, at any early stage a false promise of marriage by the accused; and whether the consent involved was given after wholly, understanding the nature and consequences of sexual indulgence.
There may be a case where the prosecutrix agrees to have sexual intercourse on account of her love and passion for the accused, and not solely on account of misrepresentation made to her by the accused, or where an accused on account of circumstances which he could not have foreseen, or which were beyond his control, was unable to marry her, despite having every intention to do so, such cases must be treated differently. An accused can be convicted for rape only if the court reaches a conclusion that the intention of the accused was malafide, and that he had clandestine motives. Hence, it is evident that there must be adequate evidence to show that at the relevant time, i.e. at initial stage itself, the accused had no intention whatsoever, of keeping his promise to marry the victim.
There may, of course, be circumstances, when a person having the best of intentions is unable to marry the victim owing to various unavoidable circumstances. The ” failure to keep a promise made with respect to a future uncertain date, due to reasons that are not very clear from the evidence available, does not always amount to misconception of fact. In order to come within the meaning of the term misconception of fact, the fact must have an immediate relevance.” Section 90 IPC cannot be called into aid in such a situation, to pardon the act of a girl in entirely, and fasten criminal liability on the other, unless the court is assured of the fact that from the very beginning, the accused had never really intended to marry her.
Uday vs. State of Karnataka6 the Supreme Court held :
It therefore, appears that the consensus of judicial opinion is in favour of the view that the consent given by the prosecutrix to sexual intercourse with a person with whom she is deeply in love on a promise that he would marry her on a later date, cannot be said to be given under a misconception of fact. A false promise is not a fact within the meaning of the Code. We are inclined to agree with this view, but we must add that there is no strait jacket formula for determining whether consent given by the prosecutrix to sexual intercourse is voluntary, or whether it is given under a misconception of fact. In the ultimate analysis, the tests laid done by the Courts provide at best guidance to the judicial mind while considering a question of consent, but the Court must, in each case, consider the evidence before it and the surrounding circumstances, before reaching a conclusion, because each case has its own peculiar facts which may have a bearing on the question whether the consent was voluntary, or was given under a misconception of fact. It must also weigh the evidence keeping in view the fact that the burden is on the prosecution to prove each and every ingredient of the offence, absence of consent being one of them.
- Dr. Gour’s Penal law, Seventh Edition, at 1845.
- AIR 1958 P H 123.
- AIR 1967 SC 159.
- Law Suit (Del) 601.
- 2013 Law Suit (SC) 442.
- AIR 2003 SC 1639.
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