Consenting Adults Can Be In Relationship Even If Either Person Is Married, Judges Can't Impose Personal Morality Or Outdated Views: Delhi HC
The Delhi High Court has observed that the relationship between two consenting adults, even when one is married, cannot be approached by Courts with an outdated lens, adding that judges cannot impose their personal morality upon such individuals.
“If two adults, even though one may be married, decide to live together or to have a sexual relationship, they must also take responsibility for the consequences of such a decision. Judges cannot impose their personal morality on the parties before them. At the same time, courts cannot ignore how educated adults themselves now look at relationships through a prism that was not acceptable in earlier times,” Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said.
The Court said that the justice system must look at such cases through the same prism – not being judgmental, but recognising the responsibility that flows from adult choices.
The Court observed that when an educated woman chooses to continue a relationship with a man despite knowing that he is married, she also takes upon herself the responsibility of that choice.
It added that such a woman must recognise the possibility that the relationship may not culminate in marriage, or that it may eventually turn sour, adding that the law law cannot always be invoked as a remedy for a relationship that fails, where it was otherwise consensual in nature.
“When a woman voluntarily enters into such a relationship, she must also accept the repercussions that may arise from it,” the Court said.
Justice Sharma said that law cannot be static and has to move and progress with the changing norms of society and that as society and communities evolve, the law too must advance.
“It cannot lag behind or apply an outdated intent to a society that has already moved forward. While cases relating to commercial or contractual disputes are necessarily decided on settled legal principles which remain relevant, cases involving human relationships stand slightly on a different footing. They must be seen in the light of the way human relations themselves have changed, and they cannot be approached with a rigid or outdated lens. Judges, too, are part of this changing society, and the justice system cannot remain detached from these realities,” the Court said.
Justice Sharma made the observations while quashing a rape case registered against a man, a pilot by profession, in 2020. The complainant woman, working as a cabin crew with an airline, alleged that she met the accused on a flight after which he contacted her through WhatsApp after obtaining her number from the company directory.
She alleged that in one of the meetings in a hotel, the accused administered some stupefying substance to her and committed rape upon her. It was alleged that thereafter, he continued to establish physical relations with her on the false pretext of marriage and also by misusing her intimate photographs and videos.
It was her case that she was compelled to undergo multiple abortions during the subsistence of the relationship.
Allowing the plea seeking quashing of FIR, the Court noted that immediately after the first incident of physical relations between the parties in the hotel , the prosecutrix became aware that the accused was a married man and could not have solemnised marriage with her.
It said that despite the said knowledge, the prosecutrix continued her relationship with the accused for more than two years thereafter, during which period the parties maintained regular physical and intimate relations.
“Notwithstanding this knowledge, she continued to voluntarily maintain physical relations with the petitioner until August 2020, when the relationship finally broke down, leading to the registration of the present FIR in September 2020,” the Court said.
It added that the conversations preceding the incident in question reflected mutual intimacy and suggested that the relationship between the parties was voluntary and consensual from the very outset.
“Once such choices are made by educated adults, the responsibility of those choices must also be acknowledged, and it is not open to one party, after the relationship turns sour, to retrospectively paint it as a crime of sexual assault,” the Court said.
Title: GAUTAM SHARMA v. GOVT.OF NCT,DELHI & ANR