Section 69 BNS: When Does a “False Promise of Marriage” Become a Crime and When Is It Just a Failed Relationship?

A relationship ends. Feelings turn bitter. And then, months or even years later, a First Information Report arrives recasting what was once a consensual relationship as a criminal deception. This is one of the most common patterns I encounter in criminal practice, and it sits at the heart of Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The law does punish men who deceive women into intimacy with promises they never meant to keep. But it does not and was never meant to criminalise every relationship that simply did not work out. So where exactly is the line?

The Practical Reality: When a Breakup Turns Into an FIR

In day to day practice, the calculated fraudster is the rarer figure. Far more often, the case begins as a genuinely consensual relationship between two adults that later collapses over family disapproval, a change of heart, an existing commitment, or plain incompatibility and is then converted into a “false promise of marriage” complaint, sometimes as a means of pressure, settlement leverage, or retaliation.

This is not merely a defence-lawyer’s grievance; the courts have said it themselves, repeatedly. Such complaints form a striking share of the docket: a 2013 study of rape trials in Delhi’s district courts found roughly one in four fell within the “false promise to marry” category, and conviction rates in this class of cases have remained low. Low conviction does not, by itself, prove that every such complaint is false cases fail for many reasons. But it does tell us that a large number of these prosecutions do not survive scrutiny, and that an FIR is being used to litigate the wreckage of a relationship that the criminal law was never designed to police.

What Section 69 BNS Actually Says

When the BNS came into force on 1 July 2024, it created a dedicated offence the old Indian Penal Code lacked. Section 69 punishes a person who, by deceitful means or by a promise to marry made without any intention of fulfilling it, has sexual intercourse with a woman where that intercourse does not amount to rape. The punishment can extend to ten years imprisonment, with a fine.

Crucially, the Explanation defines “deceitful means” to include a false promise of employment or promotion, or marriage by suppressing one’s true identity. The offence is therefore built around deception at the outset not around disappointment after the fact. It targets the lie that procured the consent, not the failure of a relationship to reach the altar.

The Legal Test: Was the Promise False From the Very Start?

The dividing line was drawn well before the new code, and it survives intact. In Pramod Suryabhan Pawar v. State of Maharashtra, (2019) 9 SCC 608, the Supreme Court laid down a two-fold test: to turn a broken promise into a crime, the promise must have been false from its inception made with no intention of keeping it and it must have had a direct, immediate bearing on the woman’s decision to consent. Earlier, in Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana, (2013) 7 SCC 675, the Court drew the same distinction: a bona fide promise that later fails is fundamentally different from a false promise designed to deceive, and a mere breach cannot automatically be branded rape.

The principle has been reaffirmed since. Justice B.V. Nagarathna has observed that the breakup of a consensual relationship cannot be given a criminal colour merely because it did not culminate in marriage. Intent at the beginning, and evidence of it, is everything.

The Supreme Court’s Latest Word: The Kesarwani Four-Step Test

The most pointed recent statement came in Pradeep Kumar Kesarwani v. State of Uttar Pradesh & Anr., Criminal Appeal No. 3831 of 2025 (arising from SLP (Crl.) No. 11642 of 2019), decided on 2 September 2025 by a Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Sandeep Mehta. The complaint there had been filed roughly four years after the alleged events, lacked essential particulars, and was unsupported by independent material. Quashing it, the Court held that continuing the proceedings would be nothing but a “gross abuse of the process of law,” and cautioned that summoning a person on frivolous allegations is a serious matter because it tarnishes reputation and drags the accused into needless litigation.

The Court went further and laid down a four-step test for High Courts exercising their inherent power under Section 482 CrPC (now Section 528 BNSS) to quash such complaints broadly: whether the material the accused relies on is sound, reasonable and of impeccable quality; whether it decisively rules out the allegations; whether the prosecution has had a fair chance to respond; and whether, taken together, a trial would clearly not end in conviction. Importantly, the same judgment stresses that this is not a licence to dismiss genuine grievances the test is meant to protect both the falsely accused and real complainants, by separating deception from a relationship that simply ended.

What This Means in Practice

For anyone weighing a complaint, the decisive questions are about intention at the start and evidence, not about the fact that a relationship ended. For anyone facing such an allegation, vague and general accusations without particulars, long unexplained delay, and an absence of contemporaneous material messages, conduct over time, statements recorded under Section 183 BNSS are recognised weaknesses that courts examine closely. And yes, where genuine deception exists, Section 69 is the right and serious tool; the same provision that protects the falsely accused exists precisely to punish the calculated deceiver. The law’s interest, on both sides, is deception, consent and proof never heartbreak alone.

Conclusion

Section 69 BNS does not make a crime out of a broken relationship or a refusal to marry. It punishes a narrow, specific wrong: using a promise that was a lie when it was made, or some other deceit, to obtain consent. Pramod Suryabhan Pawar and Deepak Gulati drew the line; Pradeep Kumar Kesarwani has now armed the courts with a clear test to enforce it and to stop the misuse of criminal process. The two questions that decide every such case remain the same was the promise false from the very beginning, and did it directly induce the consent?

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