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On 16 February 2026, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India was hearing what, on paper, looked like a familiar case. A woman had met a man on a matrimonial website. He allegedly promised to marry her. They engaged in sexual intimacy. She later discovered he was already married. She filed a complaint of rape, arguing that her consent had been obtained on a false promise of marriage.
During the hearing, Justice BV Nagarathna remarked: “Maybe we are old-fashioned, but before marriage a boy and a girl are strangers… We fail to understand how they can be indulging in physical relationships before marriage… You must be very careful; nobody should believe anybody before marriage.”
The Bench, also comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, observed that not every consensual relationship that ends in disappointment can be given a criminal colour.
The remarks travelled quickly beyond the courtroom. Not only because of who made them — Justice Nagarathna is set to become India’s first woman Chief Justice in 2027 — but because they sounded uncannily familiar. They evoked a familiar judicial discomfort with women who have sex outside marriage, cementing the long-enduring suspicion of them when they later say that consent was compromised.
The question here is larger than one hearing. Between 2020 and 2026, a series of rulings across high courts and the Supreme Court have revealed a pattern that is difficult to ignore: courts interrogating a survivor’s behaviour, invoking ideas of how a “reasonable” or “Indian” woman should act, and, at times, narrowing the scope of sexual offences through fine legal distinctions.
Many of these orders have been corrected on appeal. But they leave behind the troubling impression that, despite decades of reform, rape adjudication continues to circle back to the woman.
When consent becomes character
Indian law does recognise that consent obtained under a “misconception of fact” — including a false promise to marry — can amount to rape, if the promise was dishonest from the beginning. At the same time, courts have repeatedly warned against criminalising every failed relationship.
In April 2025, a Bench of Justices Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma discharged a former judge accused of rape on the pretext of marriage, holding that “every consensual relationship, where a possibility of marriage may exist, cannot be given a colour of a false pretext to marry in the event of a fallout… It is such a list that amounts to an abuse of process of law.”
A month earlier, in March 2025, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta quashed a rape case in which the complainant alleged that she had been sexually exploited for 16 years on a promise of marriage. The court said it was “hard to believe” that a “highly qualified and well-placed major woman” would continue such a relationship for nearly 16 years without raising a protest if there had been force or deceit. The length of the relationship, the Bench concluded, indicated that there was neither coercion nor deception.
Courts assess consent in such cases by scrutinising a woman's subsequent conduct, like repeated returns to the accused after the first instance of abuse, to infer genuine agreement rather than initial deception.
In the case of ousted Congress MLA Rahul Mamkootathil, the Kerala HC granted bail citing the survivor's post-assault meetings with him and cohabitation as prima facie condonation, though it remains to be adjudicated upon in trial.
However, what stands out here is the lens through which consent is assessed in courts. Education, professional standing, and the duration of a relationship become markers against which credibility is measured. Trials also often fail to reverse harm since evidence of mental trauma and manipulation to obtain consent are hard to gather.
The narrowing of harm, judging behaviour
The pattern extends beyond “false promise” cases.
In January 2021, Justice Pushpa Ganediwala of the Bombay High Court ruled that groping a minor without direct “skin-to-skin” contact did not amount to sexual assault under the POCSO Act. The judgment effectively suggested that touching over clothes fell outside the statute’s ambit. Days later, in another case, she acquitted a man accused of rape, observing that it seemed “highly impossible” for a single man to gag the victim, remove her clothes and his, and commit rape without any scuffle.
Both rulings triggered widespread outrage. The Supreme Court later set aside the “skin-to-skin” order, emphasising that such a restrictive reading defeated the very purpose of child protection law.
Some judgments have gone further, explicitly commenting on a survivor’s conduct.
In June 2020, Justice Krishna S Dixit of the Karnataka High Court granted bail to a rape accused, remarking that the complainant’s explanation that she fell asleep after the assault was “unbecoming of an Indian woman.” That, he said, was not how “our women” react when they are ravished.
In August 2020, Justice Rohit Arya of the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted bail to a man accused of sexual harassment on the condition that he request the complainant to tie a rakhi on him, promising to protect her “for all times to come.” The symbolism of turning an allegation of harassment into a ritual of brotherly protection was widely criticised.
In April 2025, the Allahabad High Court again drew scrutiny when it observed, while granting bail in a rape case, that the victim had “herself invited trouble” by going to a bar, drinking alcohol and accompanying the accused to his house. The Supreme Court later cautioned judges against such victim-blaming language.
Even at the trial court level, similar reasoning has surfaced. In 2021, while acquitting journalist Tarun Tejpal, Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi described the complainant’s continued communication with him after the alleged assaults as “unnatural” behaviour. The Bombay High Court later set aside the acquittal; Tejpal was convicted in 2023.
A long shadow
India’s rape law has been reshaped repeatedly in response to public outrage. The 1979 Supreme Court ruling in Tukaram v State of Maharashtra — the Mathura rape case — upheld an acquittal partly on the basis that there were no injuries and that the young tribal complainant was “habituated to intercourse.” The protests that followed led to crucial amendments in 1983, including a presumption of absence of consent in certain custodial rape cases.
After the 2012 Delhi gang rape, Parliament expanded the definition of sexual offences and tightened sentencing. In 2022, the Supreme Court released a Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes, advising judges to avoid assumptions about how a “real” victim behaves.
And yet, from 2020 to 2026, courtrooms have continued to echo questions that place women’s conduct under the microscope: Why did she travel? Why did she stay? Why did she drink? Why did she not resist visibly? Why did she not leave sooner?
Between 2020 and 2026, rape adjudication in India has revealed a tension at the heart of the system. The law on paper recognises autonomy and consent. In the courtroom, however, women’s choices continue to be dissected with a scepticism that borders on suspicion.