India, Feb. 23 -- Justice B.V. Nagarathna, set to become India's first woman chief justice in September 2027, had some marriage advice this week. "Before marriage, a boy and a girl are strangers. Whatever may be the thick and thin of their relationship, we fail to understand how they can be indulging in physical relationship before marriage."

The two-judge Supreme Court bench of justices Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan was hearing the bail plea of a man who had met a woman on a matrimonial website. He promised to marry her, had sex with her and then turned out to be already married. He then later married someone else. The woman he had met on the matrimonial site filed a complaint of rape on the grounds of "false promise to marry".

Why had s...