Marital rape: India anger as judge frees man accused of raping wife who then died

Warning: This document contains some shocking details

A man’s “unnatural intercourse” with his wife was declared illegal by an American court, which has sparked new calling for better protections for married women.

The contentious ruling has even brought the issue of conjugal murder back into the spotlight in a nation that has steadfastly refrained from making it illegal.

A 40-year-old guy who was found guilty by a trial judge in 2019 of rape and strange sex with his wife, who died shortly after the alleged assault was freed earlier this week by a high court judge in Chhattisgarh, in central India.

Additionally, the lower court had found the man guilty of” criminal homicide no amounting to death.” He was sentenced to “rigorous prison for 10 decades” on each depend, with all the phrases to work continuously.

However, on Monday, Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas of the High Court found the accused man innocent of all charges, arguing that since India did not recognize spousal rape, the father could not be held guilty of non-consensual gender or any other non-consensual strange sexual behavior.

As protesters, lawyers, and politicians continue to call for the criminalization of marital rape in India, the decision has been met with outcry.

” To see this guy walk away is intolerable. This decision may be right officially, but it is morally and socially abhorrent”, said attorney and gender rights campaigner Sukriti Chauhan.

” An attempt that absolves a gentleman of such a crime, to say it’s not a crime, is the darkest hour in our lawful system”, she told the BBC.

” It has shaken us to the core. This needs to change and alter fast”.

Priyanka Shukla, a prosecutor in Chhattisgarh, said a decision like this” sends out the information that because you’re the father, you have freedom. And you can accomplish something, you can even get away with murder”.

There is always indignation, she continued, and this is not the first time a judge has rendered such a decision.

The anger is more this period because it is so obscene and the woman died, the woman claimed.

The court papers make for grim checking.

According to the trial, the incident took place on the day of 11 December 2017, when the father, who worked as a drivers,” committed strange intercourse with the target against her will … causing her a lot of discomfort”.

She contacted his girlfriend and another sibling for assistance after he left for work, who took her to a hospital where she passed away a few hours later.

The woman claimed that her husband’s aggressive sexual behavior caused her to become ill in her assertion to the authorities and her final declaration to a magistrate.

Legal experts concur that a dying declaration, unless other evidence disagrees, is usually sufficient evidence for conviction.

The test court greatly relied on her dying declaration and the post-mortem report, which stated” the cause of death was peritonitis and vaginal perforation”- just put, serious injuries to her abdomen and rectum, to convict the man in 2019.

Justice Vyas, however, saw things different – he questioned the” purity” of the dying speech, noted that some of the witnesses had retracted their remarks and, most important, said that conjugal murder was not an offence in India.

The lower court’s judgment was” a rare of unusual circumstance”, Ms Shukla said, “probably because the person died”.

The high court order contains” but what’s disturbing about it is that there isn’t even one friendly opinion from the judge,” the judge said.

Some are shocked by the high court’s decision, given the nature of the abuse, because many believe the judge should have taken the case so quietly.

Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, India is one of more than 30 nations where conjugal assault is not a crime.

In recent years, numerous appeals have been filed requesting the termination of Segment 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been in effect since 1860.

The American colonial-era law mentions some “exemptions”- or situations in which sex is no rape- and one of them is” by a man with his own wife” if she is not under 15 years.

In 1991, India, which recently rewrote its criminal code, outlawed marital rape, but it still managed to incorporate the regressive law in its new statute book.

The idea is rooted in the notion that a wife can’t withdraw her marriage’s consent and that it is “implied” in marriage. Campaigners claim that forced sex is rape, regardless of who perpetrates it, and that such an argument is untenable in this day and age.

However, there are strong differences in opinion and there is strong opposition to criminalizing marital rape in a nation where marriage and family are regarded as sacred.

The Indian government, religious leaders and men’s rights activists have strongly opposed the move.

The government declared to the Supreme Court in October last year that the criminalization of marital rape would be “excessively harsh.” According to the federal home ministry, it “may cause serious turbulence in the marriage institution.”

Additionally, authorities assert that there are enough laws to protect married women from sexual violence. However, campaigners contend that India cannot seize control of women’s bodily bodies.

” A lot of people say the constitution cannot enter your bedroom”, Ms Chauhan said.

” But doesn’t it grant women- like all citizens- fundamental rights to safety and security? What kind of forgotten country do we call home when a woman encounters this level of violence? she asks.

In India, violence is pervasive within marriage.

According to a recent government survey, 32% of married women face physical, sexual or emotional violence by their husbands and 82% have experienced sexual violence by their husbands.

And even that doesn’t give the true scale of the problem, Ms Shukla said, because a majority of women do not report violence, especially sexual violence, out of shame.

” In my experience, women are not trusted when they complain, everyone says it must be fake. The attorney claimed that the only time such cases are taken seriously is when a woman dies or the assault is particularly gruesome.

Nothing, in Ms. Chauhan’s opinion, will change until the law changes.

” We need to make marital rape illegal.” The wife’s inability to receive justice after such a horrifying incident merits a nationwide campaign that is both well thought out and not born of anger.”

She continued, citing the government and men’s rights activists ‘ efforts to portray it as a “man versus woman debate.”

” But the demand for criminalizing marital rape is not directed at men, but rather at women’s safety and well-being.” Is it not important to ensure women’s safety”?