Parmod KumarNew Delhi, Oct. 30 -- The Supreme Court on Friday cautioned against the growing tendency to turn failed relationships into criminal cases, observing that consensual physical intimacy cannot retrospectively be termed rape merely because a relationship has broken down.
A bench comprising Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan made the observation while discharging Kerala resident Santosh Kumar N P, accused of rape and cheating,The court drew a distinction between consent secured through deliberate deception and a consensual relationship which subsequently fails, holding that intimacy during the subsistence of a relationship cannot later be criminalised merely because the parties have fallen apart.
"Physical intimacy that occurr...