ON December 11, 2017, a man in Chhattisgarh forced his wife into ‘unnatural sex’ against her will, causing her immense pain and leading to her death just hours later. The trial court in Bastar’s Jagdalpur, relying on her dying declaration and the post-mortem report, sentenced him to ten years in prison under Sections 304, 375, and 377 of the now repealed Indian Penal Code. But on February 12, 2025, the case took a shocking turn when Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas of the Chhattisgarh High Court overturned the conviction and acquitted the man reasoning that marital rape was not, per se, a crime in India. 75 years after the Constitution’s adoption, wherein Article 13, by the stroke of its print, declared obsolete all colonial legislations in effect at the time, the marital rape exception in India’s criminal code continues to dictate the everyday legality experienced by women across the country.
According to the Gender Development Index, India ranks 134th out of 193 countries, reflecting the dire state of women’s social and economic well-being. Sparsing through the National Crime Records Bureau Report 2022, one is confronted with the immense gravity of the situation, as the report reveals that rape cases alone account for 8.6 percent of all IPC crimes against women. Yet, the more alarming reality is that 96.6 percent of rape offenders are known to the victims, exposing the deeply entrenched issue of sexual violence within familiar spaces. The pressure to ‘compromise’ is equally staggering. 63 percent of all settled cases are only of cruelty by husbands or their relatives, turning justice into mere numbers. Further reinforcing this grim reality, the India National Family Health Survey (2019-21) found that 95.7 percent of married women aged 18-49 who reported experiencing sexual violence identified their current or former husbands as the perpetrators. Yet, the demand to criminalize marital rape remains unfulfilled, upheld by the archaic notion of implied consent, a legal fiction introduced by Sir Matthew Hale centuries ago.
