NGO opposes plea to make marital rape an offence

An NGO's plea in the Delhi High Court seeking to make marital rape an offence was today opposed by another NGO which said it would destroy the family structure.
Kolkata-based NGO Hridaya claimed that setting aside an exception in section 375 of the IPC which says intercourse or a sexual act by a man with his wife, aged between 15 and less than 18, is not rape, will lead to misuse of the law by women against their husbands.
It was opposing the petitions filed by NGOs RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Women's Association, which have challenged the constitutionality of section 375 (rape) of the IPC on the ground that it discriminated against married women being sexually assaulted by their husbands.

The submissions were made before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar.
Hridaya's counsel said consent for physical relations is for all time when a person enters the institution of marriage.
In its intervention plea filed earlier, the NGO had said there was no need to bring any fresh law on marital rape as the same could be misused by women to harass their husbands.

It had claimed that "a man should not be branded a 'rapist' merely because he exercised his conjugal right without respecting the right of his wife to say no. This act of forcible sex should be dealt with either under domestic violence or cruelty but under no circumstances, a husband should be branded a rapist".

The high court had earlier agreed to examine the issue raised in PILs by advocate Karuna Nundy, who represented RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Women's Association, and a man and a woman, who have sought striking down of the exception in the Indian penal law that does not consider sexual intercourse with a wife, not less than 15 years of age, as rape.
The petitions have also sought setting aside of the exception in the rape law that protects husbands, saying that it violates the right to equality, freedom and to live life with dignity provided under the Constitution.

The Delhi government had said that quashing the protection husbands enjoy against prosecution for marital rape would lead to "creation of an offence", which is a legislative job and courts cannot create or legislate an offence, which would be the inevitable outcome of striking down of the exception in the IPC.
The Centre has opposed the main petitions saying marital rape cannot be made a criminal offence as it could become a phenomenon which may destabilise the institution of marriage and an easy tool for harassing the husbands.