Rape Threat Over Text Message to Girlfriend — Can You Face Criminal Charges in India?

Rohan Mehta, a 21-year-old from Indore, had been in a committed relationship with his girlfriend, Priya Saxena, aged 22, for just over a year. Theirs was, by all accounts, a close and communicative relationship. Sometime around late February 2025, during a casual conversation over WhatsApp, the subject of Priya's old interests in dark fiction came up. A few days later, Rohan sent a message stating he would "rape" her, genuinely believing she would receive it as a callback to that earlier discussion about fiction. Priya didn't react negatively at the time. She replied that it wouldn't legally qualify as rape given their relationship, then quickly apologised, and Rohan said it was fine.

But Rohan couldn't sleep. The message sat there in the chat. He started worrying whether, months or years later, that single text could be weaponised against him if the relationship turned sour. He first spoke to a family acquaintance who practised as a general civil lawyer in Indore. That conversation left him more anxious, not less — the lawyer wasn't familiar with the specific evidentiary and procedural considerations around digital communications in sexual offence matters under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Rohan then approached Advocate Sudhir Rao. The approach was methodical: documenting the full conversation thread, analysing the context carefully, identifying what a prosecution would actually need to establish, and advising Rohan on precautionary steps going forward. The matter didn't escalate into an FIR. Specialised handling, grounded in a real understanding of how digital evidence is evaluated and what elements must be proved for an offence under BNS, gave Rohan a clear picture of his actual legal exposure and what he should and shouldn't do next.

You can read about this case in detail at https://sudhirrao.com/rape-threat-text-message-girlfriend-criminal-charges-india/