In one of the first Supreme Court readings of Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Court quashed a “false promise of marriage” FIR, holding that the new offence carries the same rigour as the old law: the promise must have been made with no intention of ever fulfilling it.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has quashed an FIR registered under Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for sexual intercourse on a “false promise of marriage,” holding that the new offence punishes only a promise made with no intention of ever being fulfilled, and that a relationship which the complaint itself describes as consensual, later ending because the man’s mother did not favour the marriage, does not disclose the deceitful conduct the provision targets [Kunal Rameshbhai Kalyani v. State of Gujarat and Another].
A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran delivered the judgment on September 7, allowing the appeal and quashing the FIR registered at Sayajiganj Police Station, Vadodara. The observations concern the interpretation of the offence; the underlying allegations were examined only to determine whether they disclosed an offence, and the Court found they did not.
What Section 69 of the BNS does
The judgment is significant for being among the earliest authoritative readings of Section 69 of the BNS, a provision with no exact predecessor in the Indian Penal Code. Under the IPC, a false promise of marriage was prosecuted as rape, under Section 375 read with Section 90 (which deals with consent given under a misconception of fact), the theory being that consent to intercourse was vitiated because it had been obtained on a promise the man never meant to keep.
The BNS altered that architecture. As the Court explained, Section 69 carves the “fraudulent and deceitful conduct” out of the grave offence of rape and makes it a separate offence with its own penalty, using the words “deceitful means or by making a promise to marry to a woman without any intention of fulfilling the same.” Crucially, the Court held that this new provision imports “the same rigor” as the old framework, the promise must have been given “with an intention of never being fulfilled.” In other words, Section 69 does not criminalise every broken engagement or failed relationship; it targets only the case where the promise was a lie from the start.
The ‘no intention from the outset’ test
To locate the threshold, the Court drew on the established IPC-era jurisprudence, in particular the decision in Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana, which the High Court had itself relied upon. That decision holds that there must be adequate evidence to show that, at the initial stage itself, the accused had no intention of keeping his promise to marry, and that a failure to keep a promise owing to unavoidable circumstances does not amount to a misconception of fact. As the passage the Court extracted puts it, the law cannot fasten criminal liability on that basis “unless the court is assured of the fact that from the very beginning, the accused had never really intended to marry her.”
The Court read Section 69 as carrying that identical requirement across into the new statute. The distinction it preserves is the one between a genuine promise later frustrated, which is not an offence, and a promise that was deceitful when made, which is. That distinction is what the “without any intention of fulfilling the same” language in Section 69 is designed to capture.
Why the FIR did not survive that test
Applying the test to the complaint, the Court found the ingredients of the offence absent. On the complaint’s own account, the appellant and the complainant had come into contact through a digital platform, a friendship developed which became a relationship, and the physical relationship followed. The Court noted a telling feature of the complaint: on the first occasion, the complainant was stated to have “succumbed to the appellant’s entreaties” and allowed intercourse, without it being stated that the physical relationship was permitted specifically on the promise of marriage.
The Court held that the statements in the complaint “clearly indicate a consensual relationship,” and that it could find nothing to suggest the appellant had induced the complainant into intercourse which she permitted only on the promise to marry. On the mere communication of a desire to marry, the Court said, it was unable to find any deceitful means. Decisively, it noted that the complaint itself stated the appellant later refused to marry because his mother did not permit it, a circumstance that, far from showing a lie at the outset, “indicates that the promise was made with all good intention, if at all it was made.” Finding no reason to allow the proceedings to continue, the Court quashed the FIR and allowed the appeal.
Why the judgment matters
The ruling is likely to be an important early marker for how Section 69 of the BNS is applied, an area certain to generate heavy litigation given how frequently “false promise of marriage” allegations arise. By holding that the new offence carries forward the strict “no intention from the very beginning” standard developed under the IPC, the Court has signalled that Section 69 is not a tool to criminalise the ordinary breakdown of a consensual relationship, or a broken promise defeated by later circumstances such as family opposition. The offence bites only where the promise was a deception at its inception, deployed to obtain consent that would not otherwise have been given.
The judgment also illustrates the continuing role of quashing jurisdiction as a filter against prosecutions that, even taken at face value, do not disclose the offence charged. Where the complaint’s own narrative shows a consensual relationship and a promise apparently made in good faith, the Court was willing to end the matter at the threshold rather than let it proceed to trial. At the same time, the decision leaves the protective core of Section 69 intact for genuine cases, those where the evidence shows a promise made with no intention of keeping it. The reasoning, tying the new statutory language back to the settled misconception-of-fact jurisprudence, gives trial courts and investigators a clear standard to apply as the provision beds in. As always with a sensitive subject of this kind, the judgment turns on the specific facts as pleaded, and does not dilute the seriousness with which genuine cases of deceitful conduct are to be treated.
Case Title: Kunal Rameshbhai Kalyani v. State of Gujarat and Another [Criminal Appeal arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 11526 of 2026]
Bench: Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran
Citation: 2026 INSC 987
Date of Judgment: September 7, 2026