India is a land where Goddesses are depicted to show agency and unleash hell on demons and worshipped as demon slayers. Worshipping the sacred feminine is done by both men and women.
But the same agency is not extended to the mortal feminine.
India’s women are not safe, they are not safe from perverts on the streets, creeps at workplaces, and more commonly men in their families.
NFHS-5 ( 2019-21) estimates that over 31% women reported experiencing some form of intimate partner violence and over 5.7% reported experiencing sexual violence.(N=63,851)
You would think that with this prevalence, marital rape will be a criminalized offence.
As the world celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 14th, 2025, the Chhattisgarh High Court set aside a husband’s conviction for rape and unnatural sex, citing India’s marital-rape exception. The wife had made a dying declaration accusing her husband; nevertheless, the court applied the law as it stands: sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife (if she is over 18) is not rape.
The wife died within hours of the alleged assault, but made a dying declaration before a magistrate accusing her husband of unnatural sex.
A dying declaration carries weight in court and legal experts say it is generally enough for conviction.
However, what transpired between the years of 2022-2024, could have contributed to this verdict.
In 2022, Dalit activist Ms. Ruth Manorama filed a fresh petition challenging the validity of the exception on grounds of breach of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.
Shortly after, a Bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y Chandrachud and Justice P.S Narasimha clubbed Marital Rape related petitions and listed them all for hearing on 21 March 21 2023. The petitions collectively argue that the exception violates Articles 14 (equality), 15 (non-discrimination), and 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution.
The IPC was replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in December 2023 as a part of Bharat’s decolonization process, however, the exception to Marital Rape stayed. Though UK alleviated its legal system from the spectre of Victorian morality in 1991.
On 4 October 2024, the Union government, in a unique intervention. filed an affidavit opposing the revocation of the marital rape exception, terming it excessively harsh and disproportionate, and damaging for the sacred marital fabric.
However, it relied on other provisions in the IPC and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 which are equipped to “ensure serious penal consequences for such violations”.
Though PWDVA recognizes sexual abuse by a husband against an adult wife as a form of violation, it dilutes its criminalization into civil protections and penal consequences, with criminality attaching mainly to any breach of a protection order. It does not prosecute non-consensual intercourse by a husband as rape.
A senior politician once argued that women must be protected at all times. In practice, retaining the exception protects the institution of marriage, not the woman inside it. Until the law recognizes a wife’s bodily and sexual autonomy, the state leaves a dangerous gap: who protects a woman from her husband when consent is violated?
Fingers in symphony 