Marital Rape Exception: An Antithesis To Women’s Dignity & Autonomy In India: An Epitome Of Consent In Perpetuity

Richa Roy, NMIMS, Indore, Madhya Pradesh

“When a woman is raped by a stranger, she has to live with a frightening memory. When she israped by her husband, she has to live with the rapist.” - David Finkelhor and Kersti Yllo

ABSTRACT

The recent split- verdict of Delhi High Court on criminalization of Marital Rape has reignited thelaw framers and custodian of the Indian Constitutional Jurisprudence to ponder upon the pre-existing stereotypes in the Indian Realm. Marital Rape is a rape committed by the husband on thewife behind the so-called iron curtain of Marriage. The non-recognition of Marital Rape in the Indian Society has indirectly given the right to do forceful sexual activity on her wife, with wife having no specific remedy to deal with that, leading to the naked violation of women’s fundamentalright of life and sexual autonomy and thereby posing a big question on the Indian legal & legislative framework. The present paper will therefore try to critically analyze the conundrum created between legal, social, cultural & political on the criminalization of Marital Rape through the lens of Constitutional, family and criminal law, the role of culture in creating a façade for criminalizing it and examines the inefficacious remedies existing for the protection of women. Inaddition to this, the paper also tried to illustrate an empirical study of the current position of MaritalRape in India with the help of survey conducted on various sections of people in India and concluded by suggesting a proposed model for its criminalization.

Keywords: Marriage, sexual violence, women, dignity, Rape, criminalization.