Section 69

Indian courts had long dealt with cases where men had sexual relationships with women by promising marriage and later abandoning them, or by hiding facts like an existing marriage or true identity. Earlier, such cases were often prosecuted as 'rape by fraud' under the old Section 375/376 IPC framework, causing confusion about when broken promises became criminal versus merely a private matter or breach of trust. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), which replaced the Indian Penal Code, created this dedicated Section 69 to separately criminalize deceitful sexual intercourse and false promises to marry, distinguishing it from rape while still holding such conduct punishable.

Even before BNS existed, the Supreme Court and various High Courts (in cases like Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana, 2013, and Anurag Soni v. State of Chhattisgarh, 2019) had ruled that a false promise to marry can amount to rape under the old law only if the man had no intention of marrying from the very beginning and used that false promise specifically to obtain consent. Courts distinguished this from cases where a genuine relationship later broke down for other reasons, which is not criminal. Section 69 appears to codify this judicial reasoning into a distinct, standalone offense, separating it from the rape provision, though how courts will interpret this new section is still developing since BNS is recent.

• Myth: Any relationship that ends without marriage counts as a crime under this section.
  Fact: Courts have clarified (in pre-BNS rulings like Deepak Gulati) that this applies only when the promise to marry was false from the very beginning and made specifically to obtain consent—not when a genuine relationship later fails for other reasons.
• Myth: This section is the same as rape and carries the same punishment.
  Fact: The text explicitly states this applies only when the act does not amount to rape; the punishment (up to 10 years) is also distinct from the punishment prescribed for rape.