New Delhi — The Indian government has told the country’s Supreme Court that criminalizing marital rape would be “unduly harsh” as it opposes court petitions seeking to change a British colonial-era law that says a man cannot be prosecuted for marital rape.
India’s Home Ministry, in a written response sent Thursday to petitions filed in the Supreme Court, argues that while a man should face “criminal consequences” for raping his wife, criminalizing the act “severely damages the marital relationship” can influence and lead to serious disruptions. in the institution of marriage.”
“A husband certainly has no fundamental right to violate his wife’s consent,” the government said in its affidavit. “However, the attraction of the crime in the form of ‘rape’, as recognized in India, to the institution of marriage can arguably be considered excessively harsh.”
Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been around since 1860 and covers rape, exempts men from charges of rape against their wives unless the woman in question is a minor. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in July passed a revised penal code that retained the law on marital rape.
Marital rape is a crime in more than 100 countries and all 50 U.S. states, where it was criminalized in the mid-1990s. But India – along with Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – is among the countries where it is not illegal for a man to rape his wife.
The Indian government has argued that sufficient legal protection already exists for married women against sexual and domestic violence. This week’s government affidavit said marital rape was addressed in a 2005 law protecting women from domestic violence.
That law recognizes sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence, but does not explicitly impose penalties for it. Another section of the penal code imposes a prison sentence of up to three years for men found guilty of acts broadly defined as “cruelty” against their spouse.
Gay marriage does currently not allowed in India.
Marital violence is widespread in India. Six percent of married Indian women have reported sexual violence by their husbands, according to the government’s latest National Family Health Survey, conducted between 2019 and 2021.
The government and several religious groups have resisted petitions to change rape laws for years, often arguing that sexual consent is “implied” by marriage and cannot be revoked.
Rights activists say this argument is outdated, especially as cases of sexual violence against women increase in the country.
DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty
India continues to face protests and strikes by medical workers in August rape and murder of a young female doctor in the city of Calcutta.
The petitions seeking changes to the century-and-a-half-old rape laws were filed in India’s Supreme Court after the lower Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the case in 2022. Arguments in the case are expected to continue for months. a verdict is pronounced.
