The city session court in Ahmedabad sets a man free from the charge of raping his fiancee under false pretences of marriage after discovering that he did not wish to marry the woman as she had not officially separated from her first marriage.
Ashvin Patel and his Krushnanagar-area family were involved in this crime. Being divorced, Patel was looking for a new bride. He enrolled himself with a marriage bureau in March 2018 where the victim, who is also divorced, had registered herself to locate a compatible match. They settled on marriage because they felt a connection. On April 8, 2018, a wedding ceremony was held.
Patel and his family stopped returning the victim’s calls a week later. She tracked down the family on April 28, 2018, and went to their village, where she was informed that the marriage would not be permitted because she had not yet obtained an official separation from her previous spouse. This was an improper divorce since the divorce contract was prepared and signed in a lawyer’s office.
The woman accused Patel of raping her on May 13 and accused his family members of cheating and criminal intimidation after they withheld presents, including an engagement ring that had been provided to her on the day of their engagement, under false pretences. At the city sessions court, Patel and his family became the subject of a trial. The accused claimed that because the woman had not received a proper divorce, the marriage had been rejected and that a false criminal complaint had been lodged.
The court declared that because the accused and the victim were engaged; it was impossible to claim that he had no intention of marrying her from the start or that he had made a false commitment out of malicious intents. The family acknowledged that social pressure had a role in the unwillingness to get married. Although accused No. 1 (Patel) may have, at most, broken a commitment, there was no false promise, hence there is unquestionably no basis for holding him criminally liable.
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