India, Oct. 6 -- A criminal prosecution cannot become a "strong-arm tactic" to force someone to marry, the Supreme Court has held, while adding that even an undertaking to marry under the threat of criminal prosecution cannot be used to establish a promise to marry.

A bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said that consent in a relationship cannot be retrospectively treated as having been obtained through misconception or coercion merely because the relationship eventually ended and the proposed marriage did not materialise.

"A criminal prosecution cannot be reduced to a strong-arm tactic," said the bench in its order released on Monday, while quashing the prosecution against a man accused of having sexually exploited a wo...