AIDWA Demands Deletion of Marital Rape Exception After Chhattisgarh HC Acquits Man

New Delhi: The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has expressed deep concern over a judgement from the Chhattisgarh High Court, which exonerated a man against his conviction under Sections 377 (unnatural sex), 376 (rape), and 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

The women’s organisation demanded that the government should delete the marital rape exception and punish husbands for the violence they commit on their wives.

The AIDWA is currently fighting a case in the Supreme Court to get rid of the marital rape exception.

The victim in the case was the 40 year-old man’s wife who had clearly stated that he had sexually assaulted her against her will by inserting his hand in her anus. The injury caused to the victim was so severe that she died in the hospital a few days later.

According to a statement released by AIDWA, the post-mortem report of the woman had clearly stated that there were perforations in her rectum and she had died of peritonitis and rectal perforation.

“The dying declaration of the victim was also recorded before the Magistrate in which she had stated that she became ill after forceful sexual intercourse by her husband. The victim had narrated the incident to her neighbours and her sister-in-law the very next day and had been taken to the hospital,” it said.

However, a single-judge bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court of Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas set aside the conviction of the accused and ordered his release.

AIDWA said the Chhattisgarh High Court doubted the veracity of the victim’s dying declaration for minor inconsistencies.

“It also did not take into account that the victim had repeatedly made the statement that her husband had forcefully had sexual intercourse with her. In spite of the fact that the Supreme Court had not struck down Section 377 of the IPC and had just made it inapplicable to consenting adults, the Chhattisgarh High Court misapplied the law.”

Terming the reasoning by the court as  “strange, twisted”, AIDWA said the court held that Section 377 would not be applicable “as it is contradictory or repugnant to the new Section on rape,” adding that  the “marital rape exception would apply to Section 377 also.”

 “This is not correct as Section 377 has not carved out an exception for a husband forcefully committing sexual acts on his wife,” the AIDWA noted.

In this connection, AIDWA cited two prior judgements of the Karnataka High Court and the Gujarat High Court, which had held that the marital rape exception would not apply in cases in which the husband had treated his wife with brutality.

“Both these Courts had commented that it did not matter whether the man who commits these horrific sexual crimes is the victim’s husband or not. They had further held that it was discriminatory to exempt a man who had committed rape merely on the ground that he was the woman’s husband,” the AIDWA statement read.

The women’s organisation pointed out that several countries had done away with the marital rape exception, including the UK, “from whom we had inherited the marital rape exception as a married woman was considered the property of her husband.”

AIDWA said under the Constitution, women, including married women, have the right to equality and the right to live with dignity, free from violence which perpetuates subordination and an unequal status.

“Laws like Section 85 of the BNS (erstwhile 498A) recognise the effect of domestic violence and punish both mental and physical cruelty. The Domestic Violence Act also gives certain rights to women, including a right of separate residence in cases of domestic violence,” it said and demanded deletion of the marital rape exception.