Tanya Sara George

This article analyses the Karnataka High Court’s reasoning in Sampras Anthony vs. State, arguing that its reliance on relational familiarity reproduces entrenched patriarchal rationalities of consent. It demonstrates how judicial focus on the conduct of a victim negates their autonomy and dissent, and sustains gendered hierarchies that continue to structure the legal imagination of sexual violence.

Introduction

It has often been stated that judicial interpretations of rape offer a reductionist account of power, failing to incorporate the multiplicity of experiences within incidents of sexual violence, thereby reinforcing a patriarchal and phallocentric conceptualisation of sexual offences. This interpretive trend becomes particularly apparent when courts invoke narratives of implied consent or pre-existing familiarity to absolve accused individuals of criminal liability, without question.

A recent illustration of this tendency is found in the case of Sampras Anthony v State of Karnataka, the High Court of Karnataka decided to quash a case under Section 64 of the BNS, i.e., rape. In doing so, the Court reasoned that there was an instance of continuous consent by virtue of the previous text exchanges between the prosecutrix and the accused, as distinguished from the scenario of non-consensual sexual intercourse

This article critically examines the judgment in Sampras Anthony, arguing that the reasoning adopted by the Court reflects an implicit acceptance of patriarchal notions of sexual autonomy and consent. The analysis does not seek to offer a definitive interpretation of the statutory framework or question the Court’s procedural authority to quash the complaint. Rather, I look into the discursive and cultural assumptions that underlie the judicial reasoning; particularly the manner in which female agency, consent, and credibility are constructed and evaluated within the legal imagination. By doing so, this piece seeks to expose how seemingly neutral legal interpretations may reproduce entrenched gender hierarchies and reinforce the systemic marginalisation of women’s voices in adjudications of sexual violence.

The Factual Matrix of the Case

The case concerns two individuals who had met on the dating platform, Bumble. Upon connecting, they had chosen to engage in messaging each other for a year on Bumble and Instagram, with texts also involving images and videos.

On 11^th August 2024, they had met in person at a restaurant. Proceeding this, the two individuals went to a hotel where they spent the night. The next morning, the accused had dropped her back home. The next day, the prosecutrix is afflicted with pain and discomfort and opts to avail an examination at Ramiah hospital. The examination revealed that the prosecutrix was sexually assaulted and thereafter filed the complaint.

The prosecutrix and accused both agree that they engaged in sexual intercourse on the night of 11^th August 2024. However, the prosecutrix stated that she had instantly withdrawn her consent and despite her objections, the accused proceeded with intercourse.

The Court, with this factual matrix, and looking at precedents consisting of cases that were termed as consensual deemed that the complaint must stand quashed.

The Victim Paradigm

Saumya Maheshwari has argued that judicial perceptions of sexual violence oft view the accused as a subject and the prosecutrix transforms into “a thing to be acted upon.” In this debacle, the prosecutrix is viewed as the pinnacle of sexual congress and it is primarily her actions, her behaviour, and her emotions that are looked into to adjudge the veracity of her claim. This perception demonstrates the fallacious assumption of the victim/perpetrator paradigm wherein the victim, as a general rule, is viewed solely within the bounds of a passive enabler who cannot bear any contribution to the occurrence. This notion is also detailed by Pratiksha Baxi during her study of multiple sexual violence trials in Gujarat. She notes that judges take into account multiple patriarchal accounts of sexual violence to foreclose the recognition of the act, resulting in a phallocentric notion of justice.

In this instance, factors such as the woman engaging on dating apps for a long time and consensually being in contact with the accused disallowed any allegation from fitting within the bounds of sexual rationality wherein women and men are viewed in relative positions with a fixed sexual hierarchy of patriarchy. The causal inference preceding this logic would thereby be that the ‘X’ does not fall into the notion of a passive victim clinging to her sexual purity and thereby would have been complicit in her encounter.

This narrative adopted by the court seems to distinguish between categories of women on whom these urges may be acted out and separate them from the women on whom these acts may not be committed on the basis of how they express their autonomy.

The Relationship Equation

The court in reaching at its decision, relied upon the precedent of Dr Dhruvaram Muralidhar Sonar v. State of Maharashtra and Tilak Raj v. State of Himachal Pradesh. It is pertinent to note that both these cases involved a breach of the promise to marry, as opposed to a casual relationship and one-time sexual encounter. That is to say, these cases concerned consensual activities of intercourse as opposed to an activity where consent was withdrawn during the event. Herein, the court has fallaciously equated circumstances involving consensual long-term relationships and marriage, with a sexual encounter where consent was withdrawn during the event.

In another piece, I argued that the distinction of viewing sexual encounters in the context of long-term relationships or a relationship involving a promise of marriage is a perilous pathway towards the judiciary implicitly drawing a far higher threshold for consent or its withdrawal in casual relationships in its inadvertent bias to drawing from the marital rape exception. For example, the Mumbai sessions court had granted bail to an individual accused of rape as he had proved that the prosecutrix and him were living together for a few months. This dangerous tendency was also pointed out by Arun Sagar wherein he stated that the closeness of a relationship is used to invalidate a testimony of rape, mirroring the marital rape exception. This is a manifestation of marital rape exception’s underlying logic of deeming consent as ‘continuous’ in relationships. This equation reinforces the victim paradigm where the consent of women choosing to engage in any form of relationships are viewed more restrictively when compared to their passive counterparts.

Similarly, it has been recorded that in various instances the legal system uses the lens of an ongoing relationship to characterise the issue as consensual, or of less value. This issue is exemplified in the present scenario with the court’s reasoning premised on the mutual violation of the parties in engaging in a relationship. In the court’s words, “A relationship born of mutual volition, even if it founders in disappointment, cannot, save in clearest of cases, be transmuted into an offence under the criminal law.”

The Lens of Patriarchal Logic

Saumya also points out that although character evidence is legally inadmissible, evidence on the character of the prosecutrix often finds its way into the courtroom as it is embedded in our socio-cultural life. This has rung through in the present instance with the opposition lawyer classifying the prosecutrix as a woman that has been active on Bumble for a long time, and as someone that chose to exchange photos and videos with the accused, of her own volition. As per societal standards, such victims, equipped with sexual autonomy are complicit in their assault as they are also looking for such encounters. This implicitly allows the court to foster assumptions regarding the assault.

This is demonstrated in the case at hand with all the precedents used by the court in arriving at the decision solely being concerned with the behaviour of the prosecutrix and thereby adjudicating based on her behaviour and viewing the accused as a passive character. Notably, this stance of operating on a modus of dissecting solely the victim’s conduct also resulted in disregarding evidence in favour of the prosecutrix such as the medical examination report and the accused’s attempt at seducing the victim.

This judicial fixation on the woman’s conduct illustrates an epistemic asymmetry of sexual offence adjudication or ‘himpathy’ wherein male narratives are given more leeway and presumed to represent rationality, while female accounts are filtered through moral evaluation. The court is inadvertently reinforcing the inference that any deviation from the passive victim archetype (as mentioned above), such as engaging on dating platforms or asserting sexual autonomy, would be treated as evidence of consent instead of the victim’s narrative of vulnerability. In this manner, the law turns into an instrument that legitimises gendered stereotypes.

Clear-cut Consent

In this case, the single judge had noted that the consent for the sexual encounter was granted by virtue of the voluntary relationship engaged by the parties. However, this view seems to carry forward the notion that men have a right of sexual dominance over their own partner, and their consent in this scenario is diminished. Further, this narrative of there being implicit consent in all forms of relationships, as argued by Arun, displays a tendency to view the construction of consent in the rationality of gender stereotypes. That is, the male is usually the initiator of sexual activity, while the women are passive facilitators. This demonstrates that the meaning of an act is always viewed in terms of the accused’s perspective of who a woman is to him, relatively rather than focusing on the very act.

The establishing of a prior relationship within the court’s narrative placed a reverse onus of non-consent having to be clearly established and communicated in order to be considered judicially acceptable consent. Manoeuvring and solely focusing on the prior conduct of the individual, the court shifted the burden of proof, to a standard of preventing the rape, attributed to the victim. Such a standard would not ostensibly be met with in any case involving a woman exhibiting sexual autonomy. Further, the court, in its attempt to ensure adequate justice will ensue has restrictively viewed the jurisprudential understanding of consent, further diminishing its individualistic and circumstantial nature to fit within patriarchal notions of ‘clear-cut’ consent of the patriarchal victim.

Conclusion  

The decision in Sampras Anthony exemplifies the judiciary’s enduring struggle to disentangle consent from the patriarchal scripts that continue to inform its interpretation. The conceptual error at the heart of this reasoning lies in the law’s persistent preoccupation with the woman’s conduct rather than the act of violation itself. In doing so, it reinstates a gendered hierarchy of credibility, wherein a woman’s prior choices and expressions of desire operate to diminish the legal recognition of her subsequent dissent. The framework of “continuous consent” transforms the courtroom into a space where the meaning of ‘no’ becomes negotiable, filtered through assumptions of male rationality and relational entitlement.

Unless judicial reasoning moves beyond this epistemic frame, from viewing women as subjects of scrutiny to bearers of agency, the promise of justice in cases of sexual violence will remain aspirational.

Tanya Sara George is a 4th-year, B.A.LL.B (Hons) student at MNLU Mumbai.