On February 5, 2026, the Supreme Court quashed an FIR that accused a man of rape on the false pretext of marriage. The two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said the case showed a normal consensual relationship that turned bitter, not a criminal offense. The FIR had been filed in Bilaspur district, Chhattisgarh, in February 2025. Last year, the Chhattisgarh High Court refused to quash it, but the Supreme Court overturned that decision. The court noted that both parties were lawyers. The complainant was a 33-year-old married woman with a minor child. The bench said, "It has been time and again settled by this court that the mere fact that the parties indulged in physical relations pursuant to a promise to marry will not amount to a rape in every case." Section 376(2)(n) of the Indian Penal Code, under which the case was filed, provides higher punishment in cases of repeated rape. But the bench warned courts must carefully distinguish real crimes from disputes in failed consensual relationships. The court also said the complainant was still legally married and not free to marry the accused at the time the alleged incidents occurred. It said this fact alone disproves the claim that she was induced into a bigamous marriage promise. "The complainant, who herself is a lawyer, was not a naive or gullible woman," the bench said. They added that she should have used better judgment before using the state’s legal machinery. The Supreme Court ruled the allegations did not amount to the offense and quashed both the FIR and subsequent proceedings.