PIL in SC seeks guidelines to penalise marital rape; make it ground for divorce

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 30

A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the government to frame guidelines for registration of FIRs in marital rape cases and frame appropriate laws and bye-laws to make it a ground or divorce.

Petitioner Anuja Kapur, an advocate, contended that clear guidelines for registration of case related to marital rape was needed to ensure accountability, responsibility and liability of those concerned and safeguard married women’s fundamental right to live with human dignity.

Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code defines rape as sexual intercourse without consent and against the will of a woman. But Exception to the Section 375 says sexual intercourse by a man with his wife, who is 15 or above, is not rape even if it is without her consent and against her will.

The petition comes four years after the Supreme Court refused to entertain a Delhi-based woman MNC executive’s plea to declare marital rape a criminal offence, saying it wasn’t possible to order a change in the law for one person. She had complained that her husband repeatedly resorted to sexual violence but she was helpless because of the legal position that didn’t treat marital rape as a crime.

Citing a National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the petitioner submitted that 5 per cent of married women between 15-49 years of age in India reported that their husbands had physically forced them to have sexual intercourse even when they didn’t want it.

At the state level 11.4% women in Bihar, 10.6% in Manipur, 9% in Tripura, 7.4% in West Bengal, 7.3% in Haryana and 7.1% in Arunachal Pradesh reported that they were physically forced by their husbands to have sexual intercourse with them even when they did not want to, the petition stated citing NHFS data.

In India, 2.5% women reported that their husbands physically forced them to perform any other sexual act which they didn’t want to do. At the state level 5.1% women in Bihar, 3.8% women in Karnataka, 3.7% women in Arunachal Pradesh, 3.3% women in Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, respectively, reported that their husband physically forced them to perform any other sexual act which they didn’t want to do, Kapur submitted.

As marital rape is not a ground for a divorce in Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, and Special Marriage Act, 1954, it cannot be used as a ground for divorce and cruelty against husband, the petitioner pointed out.