{"id":408,"date":"2018-01-21T17:19:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T17:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/?p=408"},"modified":"2018-01-21T17:19:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T17:19:53","slug":"delhi-high-court-says-marital-rape-a-serious-issue-has-become-part-of-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/delhi-high-court-says-marital-rape-a-serious-issue-has-become-part-of-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Delhi High Court says marital rape a serious issue, has become part of culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source &#8211;\u00a0<strong>hindustantimes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The Delhi High Court on Monday said marital rape was a \u201c<strong>serious issue<\/strong>\u201d which had notoriously become a \u201c<strong>part of the culture<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">A division bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C Hari Shankar, hearing a PIL against the penal code provision that protects husbands from being tried for the rape of their wives, also asked how many countries have made marital rape an offence.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">\u201cIt\u2019s (<strong>marital rape)<\/strong> a very serious issue&#8230; Is it an offence in the world? In how many countries is marital rape an offence?,\u201d the bench said. It added: \u201cMarital rape is part of the culture. See, how difficult is it for women to register a rape case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The court\u2019s remark came while hearing a PIL filed by NGO RIT Foundation, challenging Indian Penal Code\u2019s Section 375 saying it does not consider sexual intercourse of a man with his wife as rape.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The Union government had earlier defended the provision saying \u201cexception 2 (to Section 375 IPC) deals exclusively with private affairs of husband-wife based on traditional social structure and hence can\u2019t be said to be unconstitutional and in violation of Articles 14 to 21 of the Constitution\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">Section 375, which defines \u201crape\u201d also contains the exception provision which states that the rape law would not apply to assault or sexual intercourse by a husband on his wife who is above 15 years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The PIL has sought to declare the provision unconstitutional as it discriminates against married women sexually assaulted by their own husbands.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The plea has said that the law as it stands today amounts to a state-sanctioned license granted to the husband to violate the sexual autonomy of his lawfully wedded wife and is therefore, a violation of the Right to Privacy guaranteed to the wife under Article 21 of the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">\u201cThe exception to section 375 arbitrarily discriminates between women as it keeps the age of consent at 15 years for women who are in a wedlock whereas the same is 18 years in case of any other woman,\u201d it has stated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: #212121; font-family: 'PT Serif', serif;\">The court posted the matter for the next hearing on July 18.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/delhi-high-court-says-marital-rape-a-serious-issue-has-become-part-of-culture\/\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"5\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground:  !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 100% !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source &#8211;\u00a0hindustantimes The Delhi High Court on Monday said marital rape was a \u201cserious issue\u201d which had notoriously become a \u201cpart of the culture\u201d. A division bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C Hari Shankar, hearing a PIL against the penal code provision that protects husbands from being tried for the rape [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[749,751,36,750],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-delhi-high","tag-part-of-culture","tag-rape","tag-serious-issue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1583,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/1583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakilsahab.in\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}