The Marital rape is the act of forced sexual intercourse with one’s spouse without the spouse’s consent. The lack of consent is the key element and need not essentially involve physical violence. Marital rape may be considered both domestic violence and sexual abuse.
The rape and Domestic violence laws in India are women centric, leaving a gap for mens to seek protection in matrimonial cases. The rape laws especially the conscept of marital law in india is greatly inspired by the western interpretation, however the said protection for men is totally absent in Indian context. It is also to point out here how the marital rape charges will be established due to its being purely private where no evidence is available and merely a statement of a woman against her husband will be considered sufficient to prove him guilty. This one sided approach has destroyed several lives of mens despite being proved innocent in the courts of law. This very situation and unnecessarily misuese of women protection laws creates a dilemma as to whether the marital rape should be crime or not in India? Few of the highlighted cases are discussed below:
Sarvjeet Singh vs Jasleen Kaur
- 4 years of public shaming
- His privacy was disrupted
- He was mentally harassed
- Jasleen got the advantage of being a girl
- She went to Canada during the case
- She got support from the media and influencers stood in favor of her
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Vishnu Kumar Tiwari vs The State of Uttar Pradesh
- He spent 20 years of his life in jail whereas the minimum impressment is of 10 years
- He lost his family members and was not able to attend the funeral of anyone
- His life is destroyed as he is already 43 and left with no skills to work or assets to take advantage of.
As per the above case, we can very well see that
- Law has been used for manipulating its means at one’s will.
- Life of people are uprooted in just a mere complaint and the government should help them with the jobs that they should be at that time or should do something for people like Vishnu Tiwari who were jailed at the time of his skill development age.
As per a recent case in Ghaziabad, the mother of a girl child filed a case against Mr. Rajat blaming him for being in sexual contact with her daughter on October 2020. On 30th January 2021 While hearing the case, the court of the special judge (POCSO Act), Mahendra Srivastava, found the rape allegation to be false on the basis of evidence during the trial.
The major point to be noted is that if Mr. Rajat was found guilty, he would have to face a minimum of 10 years of jail and other punishment under the POCSO act. Whereas the complainant was fined Rs.20,000/- or 15 days of imprisonment if she fails to pay the amount.
In all the cases, Male had to face the consequence even if they are not wrong. I would also agree that there are majorities of complaints about true events are not registered but according to Delhi commission of women (DCW), which revealed that 53.2% of rape cases registered in police stations between April 2013to July 2014 in Delhi were falsely filed. However it may not be denied that rape crimes are growing day by day.Out of 2735 complaints of rapes only 1287 case were found to be true and the rest 1464 case was filed on false grounds.
Just a mere complaint should not be the ground for evasion of someone’s life, some hardcore evidence should be entertained just to verify the base of the case.
Laws are made to safeguard one’s life, ethics and here in the current time we can see that the law is being manipulated just because someone has more weight on their side.
According to my opinion before criminalizing marital rapes, the government should work on the present laws with the introduction of proper punishment or the same punishment for the petitioner under which the case is filed if a false allegation found, otherwise the introduction of this law will deliver justice to few & injustice to many.
It is a violation of Article 21, which empowers every citizen, right to life. So, therefore, it can be concluded that the cultural and socio-economic environment of our country is entirely different from western countries, and replication of western law may not be suitable for our constitution. don’t, we feel like discussing it with all sections of society. It needs a long debate
In the current time we can say that due to the bend of the law towards female society, people are scared of the law instead of respecting it because one can take advantage of the law with a risk of mere some small penalty against a sorrowful life for the defendant.
By – Yash Dwivedi