Marital rape concept cannot be applied in India, says govt

Marital rape “cannot be suitably applied” in Indian context due to a variety of factors like “mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament”, the government said on Wednesday as it refused to treat it as a crime.

Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary cited a Law Commission Report on review of rape laws for not criminalising marital rape, saying it did not recommend such a measure.

This came despite a strong recommendation by Justice J S Verma Commission, set up to strengthen anti-rape laws following the brutal Delhi gang-rape and repeated plea from activists.

The commission noted that countries like Canada, Australia and South Africa treat marital rapes as crimes and demanded that the exception given for marital rape be removed.

In written reply to a question raised by DMK MP Kanimozhi in the Rajya Sabha, the minister admitted that the External Affairs Ministry as well as the Women and Child Development Ministry reported that the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women has recommended to India to criminalise marital rape.

The Law Commission of India, while making its 172nd Report on Review of Rape Laws, “did not recommend” criminalisation of marital rape by amending the Exception to section 375 of the Indian Penal Code and hence “presently there is no proposal to bring any amendment to the IPC in this regard,” he said.

Chaudhary went on to say, “It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors such as level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament, etc.”

The Verma Commission had dealt in detail with the issue in its report, saying the exemption for marital rape stems from a “long out-dated" notion of marriage, which regarded "wives as no more than the property of their husbands”.

Last year, a Delhi Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau raised the issue through a few judicial orders. 

On one occasion, she pointed out that legislatures are yet to take “serious note of rampant marital sexual abuse which women suffer silently” while another time, she said, “non recognition of marital rape in India, a nation set upon the bedrock of equality, is gross double standard and hypocrisy in law.”