On a cold night in January, Akanksha Mehta’s phone pinged with a text message that would change her life.
A romantic couplet from a popular Bollywood song, Sunn Raha Hai Na Tuu (Are You Listening?), appeared in her Instagram inbox, followed by a friendship request.
The sender was Abhishek Jandial, also known as Lucky, 27, from Jaipur city in the north Indian state of Rajasthan.
Drawn in, Ms Mehta, a 23-year-old college student, accepted the request. Their online conversations quickly blossomed into a real-world romance, with dates at local restaurants and walks in the park.
“He promised to treat me like a princess,” Ms Mehta recalls, her voice heavy with regret. “But I ended up feeling like a sex slave.”
Mr Jandial, who claimed to come from a wealthy family, promised her marriage. “I believed him and after one year of dating, I had consensual sex with him and became pregnant,” said Ms Mehta.
But when she shared the news of the pregnancy, her lover’s facade crumbled and he abruptly ended the relationship.
‘I was deceived. He was married’
“I was deceived. He was a married man all along, with no intention of marrying me. He lured me into pre-marital sex,” Ms Mehta told The Telegraph.
In most countries, this would be an unfortunate story with little opportunity for the victim to seek justice.
But under new Indian legislation on rape, men who lure women into sex with the promise of marriage face 10 years in prison.
In July, India’s government updated its colonial era laws on rape, introducing rules around relationships engaged in on false pretences in Section 69 of the reform.
Ms Mehta has told her lawyer to press Section 69 of the new criminal code against Jandial and seek the maximum punishment.
“I was apprehensive that he would come out clean based on consensual sex between two adults but the new law has given me a new lease of life,” she said.
“There should be capital punishment for men who lure women with false promises of marriage and after sex back off. I wish he would rot in jail forever because he destroyed my life.”
Ms Mehta discovered the extent of her betrayal when she reminded Mr Jandial about his promise of marriage. On April 30, after several furious rows, he came to her home and promised that he would later bring his parents to arrange a marriage.
But he soon fled again and cut off all contact. Only after Ms Mehta filed a complaint against him with Rajasthan police was he found, living in the city with his wife, and arrested.
Fears law could be misused
Some experts fear that India’s expanded new rape law could be misused against men.
Sagina Walyat, a constitutional and human rights lawyer at the Punjab and Haryana high court, said women who feel wronged in a relationship could easily use it to seek revenge.
“The law draws from a woman’s presumptions (about a relationship). In such cases the burden of proof shifts on to the accused,” she said. “It is very convenient for women to go and say this thing (sexual abuse) happened, and we have already had many cases to this effect.”
Soon after the new code was implemented, a court in the Indian state of Kerala acquitted a man who had similarly been accused by a woman of entering into a sexual relationship with her under false pretences.
“If the materials would show that the relationship is purely consensual without an element of misconception of fact, the same is not rape,” its July 9 verdict read.
The key question being examined by the court was “whether at the very inception there is mutual consent to have sexual intercourse or the same is under a misconception of fact, on the promise of marriage or otherwise.”
The court found no evidence to indicate in this case that the complainant’s consent was based on a misunderstanding.
Victims may be reluctant to press charges
The conservative nature of Indian society may mean that few women choose to avail themselves of the new legislation, said Satwinder Satti, the president of Abb Nahi, an organisation that helps abandoned women.
“The fact is that girls in India who are deceived by men generally don’t want to go to court as it impacts the future prospects of their marriage,” she said. “Parents never allow it as they fear it could bring shame to the family.
“Another issue is that once a case is reported, it endlessly drags on in courts, which acts as a dampener for the victims who might otherwise seek a legal redress.”
Audrey Dmello, the director of Majlis Law, a women’s rights group in India, was more hopeful for the reform.
“Earlier, lots of ‘promise to marry cases’ were registered but they were registered as rape. This created total confusion,” she told The Telegraph.
“People will say that this is not rape, or that it is not against her consent. But now, the government has culled it out and made it a separate section,” she said.
“So one will actually be able to more clearly see how big this problem is. Otherwise it was getting hidden among rape cases.
“The number of rape cases was expanding and we were not able to address both the issues separately. This will change now.”