The colonial-era law criminalising adultery denudes women of their "sexual autonomy" and treats them as a "chattel" and "property" of their husbands, the Supreme Court ruled today while holding the provision as unconstitutional.
Justice D Y Chandrachud, who was part of a five-judge constitution bench that unanimously struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) dealing with the offence of adultery, said the provision was "destructive" and deprives women of their "autonomy, dignity and privacy."
In his 77-page verdict, he said "a society which perceives women as pure and an embodiment of virtue has no qualms of subjecting them to virulent attack: to rape, honour killings, sex-determination and infanticide. As an embodiment of virtue, society expects the women to be a mute spectator to and even accepting of egregious discrimination within the home."
Section 497 of the 158-year-old IPC says: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery."