The Delhi High Court on May 11, 2022 delivered a split verdict on decriminalising marital rape in the country.
Salient features
- Justice Rajiv Shakdher struck down Exception 2 of the Indian Penal Code’s Section 375 that decriminalised rape within marriage.
- Justice C. Hari Shankar upheld the validity of Exception 2 of the Indian Penal Code’s Section 375.
- The petitions challenging the exception to Section 375 of the IPC were filed by NGO RIT Foundation, All India Democratic Women’s Association and a marital rape victim.
- The Delhi High Court has been hearing arguments in the case since 2017. However, this is not the first time that the issue of marital rape has been raised in the country.
- The need to remove this marital rape exception was rejected by the Law Commission of India in 2000, while considering several proposals to reform India’s laws on sexual violence.
- Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) defines the acts that constitute rape by a man. The provision, however, lays down two exceptions as well. Apart from decriminalising marital rape, it mentions that medical procedures or interventions shall not constitute rape.
- Exception 2 of Section 375 states that “sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape”. In October 2017, the Supreme Court of India increased the age to 18 years.
