Section 69 punishes a person who has sexual intercourse with a woman by employing deceitful means, or by making a promise to marry her without any intention of fulfilling it, where that intercourse does not amount to the offence of rape. The Explanation clarifies that "deceitful means" includes a false promise of employment or promotion, or marrying by concealing one's true identity. The punishment is imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and fine.
Verified against the National Crime Records Bureau's official BNS–IPC concordance (Sankalan Portal), which lists Section 69 as a New Section with no corresponding entry in the old Indian Penal Code, 1860 — cross-checked directly against the bare text of both Acts.
| BNS 69 | IPC, 1860 equivalent | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 69 | None — concordance marks this "New Section" | No predecessor |
This project's own local copy of the old Code was searched directly for any provision addressing sexual intercourse obtained through deceit or a false promise of marriage as a standalone, non-rape offence, and none exists. A separate, narrower old provision, IPC Section 493 ("Cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage"), addressed a different and more specific fact pattern — a man deceitfully causing a woman to believe she was lawfully married to him, and to cohabit or have intercourse with him in that belief — but that provision required the specific deceit of a false belief in a subsisting lawful marriage, not the broader categories of deceit (false promise to marry without intent to fulfil it, false promise of employment or promotion, or marrying while suppressing one's identity) that Section 69 itself expressly covers. Section 69 is accordingly treated as a genuinely new provision, not a restatement of IPC Section 493 under a new number.
Whoever, by deceitful means or by making promise to marry to a woman without any intention of fulfilling the same, has sexual intercourse with her, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine.
Explanation.—“deceitful means” shall include inducement for, or false promise of employment or promotion, or marrying by suppressing identity.
Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.
Section 69 addresses a distinct category of non-consensual conduct: sexual intercourse where the woman's consent, though outwardly given, was procured through deception rather than force, intimidation, or the other vitiating circumstances that would make the act rape under Sections 63 and 64. Two routes into the offence are stated. The first is a promise to marry made without any intention of ever fulfilling it — the deceit lies not in the promise itself but in the accused's state of mind at the time it was made, since a promise honestly made and later broken for genuine reasons does not fall within this section. The second is "deceitful means" more broadly, a term the Explanation defines to include inducement for, or a false promise of, employment or promotion, or marrying the woman while suppressing one's own identity (for example, concealing an existing marriage, a different name, religion, or caste where that concealment is what induced her consent). In every case, the intercourse must not itself amount to rape; where it does, Sections 63 and 64 apply instead and carry a more severe punishment. The punishment under Section 69 is imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and fine — with no stated minimum, unlike several of the neighbouring provisions in this Chapter.
These judgment(s) relate to Section 69 as a whole rather than to one specific sub-section, and so are presented together here rather than alongside a particular clause above.
A woman agreed to sexual intimacy after the accused promised to marry her, but the marriage never took place. The Supreme Court held that a genuine promise to marry that later falls through — a breach of promise — is not the same as this offence, which requires the accused to have never intended to marry from the very outset and to have used that false promise merely to obtain consent. The evidence here showed the woman took a conscious decision, understood the implications of her choice, and that the accused's own family later obstructed a marriage he seemed genuinely willing to go through with — so no offence was made out.
Currency check: decided November 2004, a foundational authority on the false-promise-to-marry doctrine; no adverse subsequent history found.
No. The section requires that the promise to marry was made without any intention of fulfilling it in the first place. A promise made honestly, which later could not be kept for genuine reasons (a change in circumstances, a mutual disagreement, and so on), does not by itself satisfy this section.
It covers marrying, or inducing intercourse through a promise of marriage, while concealing facts about one's true identity that the woman would have regarded as material to her consent — for example, concealing an existing marriage, one's real name, religion, or caste.
Section 68 punishes intercourse obtained by abusing a specific position of authority, trust, or institutional custody. Section 69 instead punishes intercourse obtained through deceit or a false promise of marriage, with no requirement that the accused hold any particular position of authority over the woman.