MUMBAI: The Bombay high court has come to the aid of a UAE-based NRI who was accused of raping and cheating by a Pune resident , who he had met on a matrimonial site and their proposed marriage was cancelled.

A division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai quashed the first information report (FIR) registered against Nitin Jadhav (47), a divorcee with a 13-year-old son. The woman, Seema Patil (48), also a divorcee, claimed that Jadhav had forced her to have physical relations and then gone back on his promise to marry her.

“The facts unequivocally do show that Jadhav was serious about getting married to Patil, however, the mutual plan could not go through due to strict conditions imposed by her, to which the he was not agreeable. By no stretch of imagination, from the material on record, it can be said that the promise given by Jadhav to marry was a false promise. In our considered view, this is also not a case of breach of promise. At the most, it can be said that this is a case of cancellation of marriage,” said the judges.

The court also ruled that no case of cheating was made out. “By no stretch of imagination, it can be said that the Jadhav’s promise to marry Patil was fraudulent or dishonest and that, too, at the time of making the promise,” the high court bench added.

Jadhav and Patil had met each other on a matrimonial site. According to Patil, she was introduced to his family and friends as his fiancée and had even made a visit to Dubai to meet Jadhav’s

son. Patil claimed that despite agreeing to marry her, Jadhav delayed it. Finally in 2013, she lodged a complaint.

Jadhav, furnished emails written by Patil objecting to his first wife visiting his house and him maintaining contacts with her. Jadhav’s lawyers pointed out that in his last letter to Patil he had sought to postpone the wedding and, in fact, it was her father who had responded by calling it off.

(Names changed to protect the couple’s identity)

