Supreme Court to reconsider husbands' immunity in marital rape cases
- In Reports
- 07:47 PM, Sep 18, 2024
- Myind Staff
The Supreme Court, in its remarkable step, announced on Wednesday that it would soon hear multiple cases challenging the protection law that allows husbands from being prosecuted for marital rape. In a first-of-its-kind series of rulings, several women and their families have been challenging the law through petitions, averring that it empowers husbands to commit the crime of rape against wives, as long as she is not a minor and does no legal damage.
Senior advocate Indira Jaising approached the bench, which was chaired by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and consisted of Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. Jaising emphasised the critical need for judicial review and the urgency of the situation. Chief Justice Chandrachud responded by acknowledging the ongoing matters that were part-heard, but she also promised to take the workload into consideration and possibly schedule the marital rape cases in the near future.
The exemption clause of the previous Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code and its revision in the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita are at the core of the legal dispute. These two laws stipulate that a man's sexual relations with his wife cannot be regarded as rape if she is over 18. The law is going to be challenged with this provision.
Different judges have responded to this issue in different ways; most notably, a split decision from the Delhi High Court in May 2022 raised important legal issues about the constitutionality of the marital rape exception. Furthermore, in March of the previous year, the Karnataka High Court issued a contrasting ruling that acknowledged these exemptions as being in violation of the constitutionally guaranteed principles of equality before the law found in Article 14.
Image source: Law Trend
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