MUMBAI: It is a case that underscores legal perils that shadow consensual sex between teenagers. A Borivli girl had filed a rape case against her boyfriend of years when she felt cheated by him. Now married, the couple is trying to get the case quashed. A bench of Justices V M Kanade and P D Kode a few days ago expressed concern at the young couple’s fate and said it wished to look at the larger picture instead of only quashing the plea.The judges appeared increasingly incredulous as the boy’s lawyer recounted the facts of the case. The Bombay high court last month granted the young man anticipatory bail, which was earlier denied by a sessions courtThe girl and boy, neighbours in Borivli, were seeing each other for six years. Her father is a businessman and his father a railway employee. The couple had sexual relations in 2012, but this year the relationship soured.The girl (now 18) complained to her father that he was borrowing money from her—she sold some of her mother’s jewellery—and spending it on other girls. The girl and her father, along with a social worker, filed a police complaint against the boy on May 15. It said the boy had sex with her after promising marriage—a statement that, as always, prompted the police to invoke the rape charge on the notion that it amounted to ‘technical rape’. The FIR also accused the boy of cheating and criminal breach of trust.But a week later, the Gujarati girl married the Maharashtrian boy, saying she was still in love with him. Their parents did not stop the wedding but disowned them. A sessions court rejected the young man’s pre-arrest bail plea, though the HC granted him anticipatory bail on June 13 on a personal bond of Rs 1,000. The HC said the girl was “not interested in pursuing the criminal case as she is happy with him”.The girl is now living with her husband’s married sister in a city near Mumbai, while he has returned to the hostel of the Jalgaon engineering college where he studies.The young couple realised that a rape charge is not easy to shake off. It cannot be settled out-of-court, with or without the court’s consent. Nor can the courts quash it at their urging.The young man’s lawyer, Niranjan Mundargi, has knocked on the HC’s door for justice, relying on a landmark 2012 Supreme Court ruling. The SC judgment says that an HC can put an end to even a rape case if there is a compromise and a trial is likely to only be oppressive for the accused and end in an acquittal.Mundargi told the court last Wednesday, “It was clearly consensual and there is no case of rape here. Other charges of cheating now stand resolved with their marriage and are in any case compoundable”. When Mundargi said he had “interviewed the girl and the boy, and…”, Justice Kanade completed the sentence, warmly saying, “…and found that the girl is stupid.” The girl and boy were in court, appearing the college students they are. The judges said they wanted to see if a solution could be reached where the parents could be made to accept their marriage.“The parents are not on talking terms with the two, who are barely adults. She is not yet 19 and he is 21. Let us call her father, so that her future can be secured and to see if the matter can be resolved amicably,” the bench said.It posted the matter to August 13.