The Delhi High Court today asked the Centre to spell out its stand petitions seeking to make marital rape a criminal offence.
Marital rape (or spousal rape) is an act in which one of the spouses indulges in sexual intercourse without the consent of the other.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar asked the Centre to respond to petitions seeking declaration of Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as unconstitutional on the ground it discriminated against married women being sexually assaulted by their husbands.
The matter would come up for further hearing on August 28.
The bench agreed to examine the issue raised in PILs by NGOs RIT Foundation, All India Democratic Women’s Association and a man and a woman, who sought striking down of the exception in the Indian penal law that did not consider sexual intercourse with a minor wife, above 15 years of age, as rape.
The exception in section 375 of the IPC which deals with the offence of rape, was brought by way of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013, which was enacted after the horrific gangrape case of December 16, 2012.
The petitioners have claimed that the exception was “unconstitutional and violative of the Right to Equality guaranteed to married women under Article 14 of the Constitution as it decriminalises rape when the perpetrator is the lawfully wedded husband of the victim.”
One of the NGOs has claimed that marital rape has been criminalised in almost all major common law jurisdictions throughout the world, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Canada.
The Centre had defended its legislation, saying child marriages were taking place in India and the decision to retain a girl’s minimum age as 15 years to marry was taken under the amended rape law to protect a couple against criminalisation of their sexual activity.
The Centre had said that husbands have been protected from prosecution for any sexual act with their wives who were above 15 years of age in view of the “social reality” of child marriages in India.
“Although the age of consent is 18 years and child marriage is discouraged, marriage below the permissible age is avoidable, but not void in law on account of social realities,” it had told the court earlier.
A man, charged with forcibly having unnatural sex with his wife, has also approached the high court claiming he is protected from prosecution since “marital rape” is not an offence in India, according to the conjugal laws.
( Source – PTI )
