It’s not often that we open a newspaper and actually come across a piece of good news that may drastically improve our morning chai. Yet, today was one such morning. The Delhi High Court, in an unusual display of progressive thinking and foresight quashed a petition that sought to grant protection from rape charges to men in live-in relationships.
A man living in with a woman is not immune to charges of rape, the Delhi high court has ruled, saying such a relationship can’t be granted status of marriage.
The court made the observation while hearing a PIL, which had sought direction of the government to keep the cases of live-in relationships outside the purview of the offense of rape.
“As far as the relief sought, of keeping the live-in relationships outside the purview of Section 376 (rape) of IPC is concerned, the same would amount to giving the live-in relationships, the status of matrimony and which the legislature has chosen not to do,” a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw noted.
The court further noted that “a live-in relationship constitutes a distinct class from marriage.”
It is great that our judicial system has been recognising the validity of live-in relationships. But this is even better news – the fact that the Delhi HC sought to not grant immunity against rape charges to men in live-in relationships. Ideally that would have been a tricky situation for the girl, similar to marital rape, where it is presumed that since they are in this relationship together, that is equivalent of consent.
We women hope that this quashing of the PIL by the court is an indication that courts are gradually beginning to realise that forced sex is forced sex, even if consent was given for previous acts earlier. And given that live-in relationships is gradually becoming common among the urban dwellers in India, it also gives a woman in a live-in relationship the necessary legal safeguards, especially in a society that frowns upon it.
On the other hand, marital rape still remains unrecognised in India and husbands are given immunity from rape charges under such situations. Many perpetrators often take undue advantage of this law, whether it be a husband who inflicts sexual violence on his wife, or the rapists who offer to marry their victims, to ‘save their honour’!
It only takes a recent report of a study by the International Center for Research on Women, a Washington-based non-profit, to realise how widely prevalent marital rape is in India. According to their study, one in five Indian men have admitted to forcing themselves sexually on their wives.
Marital rape, as such, is very common among women from financially poor backgrounds and from slums, who are no strangers to marital violence. Many of the women from slums share a strange camaraderie, of being victims of domestic violence and marital rape. Yet it is hardly ever discussed as an issue to be dealt it. Instead most women shrug it off as a reality of their lives. ‘It is the right of the husband to beat up his wife when he wants to,’ they say.
Despite laws on rape being strengthened after the Nirbhaya episode, marital rape remained untouched. Some experts allude this to a reluctance on the part of the courts and lawmakers to meddle with the religious marriage acts in India, which stress that a wife is duty-bound to have sex with her husband.
Worse still, it is all too common for courts to grant divorce to men, citing ‘mental cruelty’ because the wife denied sex to the husband. This itself is in contravention with the spirit of a law that seeks to punish marital rape.
It’s a tough tight rope for the courts to walk, but many women are suffering agonies on a daily basis on account of marital rape. So, it is time we changed the language of rape – to not just violation of virginity or honour, but forced sex, forced humiliation and more importantly, lack of consent.
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