Failed relationships shouldn't be criminalised as rape: SC

The Supreme Court on Monday flagged the "disquieting tendency" where failed or broken relationships are given the colour of criminality like rape, saying misuse of the criminal justice machinery in this regard is a matter of concern and calls for condemnation.

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The apex court, while quashing an FIR in an alleged rape case, said that to convert every sour relationship into an offence of rape not only trivialises the seriousness of the offence but also inflicts upon the accused an indelible stigma and grave injustice. A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan observed that the offence of rape, being of the gravest kind, must