A Delhi court has said that absence of provision to deal with cases of marital rape as an offence exposes the "double standards and hypocrisy in law" in the country which cries for gender equality.
"Its rape when a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he has a licence by marriage law to do it or not," the court observed, while dismissing the bail application of a man, accused of raping and forcing his wife for unnatural sex.
"It is unfortunate that we in India are yet to recognize woman's right to control marital intercourse as a core component of equality," Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said.
"Though the constitutional validity of this exception 2 (sexual acts by a man with his wife, who is not under 15 years of age, is not rape) to section 375 (rape) IPC is yet to be tested before the competent court, yet in my view there cannot be a difference between rape and offensive sexual acts outside of and within marriage, for that itself would be violative of the principles of equality as enshrined in the Constitution," the judge said.
The court was deciding the bail plea of the man against whom his wife, a resident of Delhi, has lodged an FIR alleging that he used to rape and commit unnatural sex with her. She said that he used to show her adult videos and also physically hurt her by biting her.
"Non-recognition of marital rape in our nation set upon the bedrock of equality is gross double standard and hypocrisy in law which is central to the subordination and subjugation of women and hence the need to address the issue by both statutory law as well as judicial pronouncements.
"Reluctance of the legal system to recognize marital rape as a crime and then to prosecute except in extreme cases is a big problem and what is more worrisome is the fact that when it comes to marital rape and sexual acts within a marriage, our society either visualizes this as an incident provoked by a wife who refuses to perform her duty or accepts it as something normal and chooses to look the other way," it said.
