Every Voice, Every Wound
- IJLLR Journal
- 10 hours ago
- 1 min read
Palak Parihar, Amity University Jharkhand
ABSTRACT
India’s rape laws have long operated within a limited imagination, one that sees cisgender women as the only possible victims, and cisgender men as the only possible perpetrators. Such a narrow framework is not only archaic but violently exclusionary. Survivors who are male, transgender, non-binary, or intersex remain invisible to the law, their pain silenced by omission, their trauma unlegislated.
In 2023, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (“BNS”) was passed to replace the colonial Indian Penal Code. Yet Section 63, which redefines rape, retains the same heteronormative lens, continuing to frame rape as a crime committed by a man against a woman. While cloaked as reform, this section perpetuates a legal fiction that justice must fit neatly into binary genders and predefined roles of powerlessness and predation. This paper argues that such exclusion is not just outdated, it is unconstitutional, violating the guarantees of equality, dignity, and life under Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution. Through a synthesis of real-life testimonies, landmark case laws, comparative international jurisprudence, and constitutional interpretation, this paper calls for a radical, inclusive reimagining of India’s rape laws.
The work centers survivor narratives that have been sidelined - men raped by men, trans persons brutalized by police, non-binary individuals denied recognition even in trauma and demands that law reflect their realities.
At its core, this research is a reckoning: a call to legislators, jurists, and citizens to recognize that a justice system which excludes some, protects none.
Keywords: cisgender, perpetrators, intersex, heteronormative, reckoning
