New Delhi: A man accused of raping a married woman on the false promise of marriage has been acquitted by a Delhi court, which observed it was a case of an "extra-marital affair being converted into rape".

The court said the married woman, who had a son, got involved in the affair during the subsistence of her marriage and to save herself from "embarrassment", she conveniently lodged a rape case against her paramour claiming he promised to marry her and had physical relations with her and then retracted from his promise and also got her pregnancy aborted.

"This trend of extra-marital affairs being converted into rape cases is coming up as several such cases have been filed in court on similar allegations. When a woman herself is not in a capacity to marry another man during the subsistence of her marriage, then why should her paramour be prosecuted, incarcerated and be tried for rape when it is actually just an extra-marital affair?

"This kind of unscrupulous litigation is required to be nipped in the bud itself," Additional Sessions Judge Nivedita Anil Sharma said, adding that with changing times, the understanding of "morality" is also changing.

The court acquitted Uttam Nagar resident Deen Dayal of the charges of rape and cheating, saying there is no material on record that the 26-year-old woman was forced into physical relations by the accused on a false promise of marriage.

"In fact, what emerges from the evidence of the woman is that there appears to be an element of an extra marital affair between her and the accused since she has not taken a divorce (legal) from any court and she herself was not in a position to marry anyone else and consequently the present rape case was lodged probably to save the embarrassment for herself," the court said.

According to the prosecution, the woman filed a complaint with the police in May, 2013 alleging that in 2012 Dayal had repeatedly raped her on the false promise that he would marry her.

The woman said she was living as a tenant in the house of Dayal, a divorcee and a father of two teenaged kids, since 2011 and he first asked her for friendship and said he wanted to marry her, it said.

He then took her passport size photographs saying he would use it for the purpose of court marriage, it said.

Thereafter, the accused started having physical relations with her on a regular basis and they started living as husband and wife but later on in 2013, he refused to marry her, which prompted her to register a case against him, it said.

The woman had alleged she got pregnant twice and the man got her pregnancy terminated.

The court, however, said the woman's version was "inconsistent and contradictory" and the circumstances reveal that she had established physical relations with Dayal on her own and there was nothing on record to show that he ever committed any offence, as alleged.

"It is saddening to note that when the prosecutrix, a married woman, even if separated from her husband, gets involved in an extra-marital affair, she is projecting herself to be a victim and her paramour to be a culprit and guilty of raping her on a false promise of marriage when she herself cannot marry another man," the judge said.

Dayal had claimed innocence saying the woman was not paying rent to his mother despite her demands and as his mother wanted her to vacate the premises and that she has lodged a false case against him in order to grab his mother's property.