The Need For Stricter Rape Punishment In India: A Critical Legal And Socio-Legal Analysis
Raghav Singhal, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies
ABSTRACT
Sexual violence against women remains one of the most persistent and multi- dimensional problems confronting India's criminal justice system. Despite successive rounds of legislative amendment from the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1983 through to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) reported incidents of rape continue to rise, conviction rates remain low, and case pendency runs into hundreds of thousands.
This paper traces the doctrinal history of rape law in India, from its colonial origins under the Indian Penal Code, 1860 to the present regime under the BNS 2023, and examines landmark judicial decisions that have shaped the law. It supplements this doctrinal analysis with a socio-legal perspective, drawing on root-cause and policing scholarship to situate rape not merely as a legal category but as a product of patriarchal social structure, institutional failure, and policing culture.
The paper further reviews empirical evidence on case pendency and conviction rates, including findings that mandatory minimum sentencing introduced in 2013 may, counter-intuitively, have coincided with a fall in conviction rates in Delhi's trial courts, and evaluates the ongoing doctrinal debate on an affirmative standard of consent. It concludes that stricter statutory punishment, without parallel reform of investigation, prosecution, forensic infrastructure, policing culture and social attitudes, is unlikely by itself to secure either deterrence or justice for survivors.
Keywords: rape law, India, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, IPC Section 375, Nirbhaya, marital rape, consent, policing, POCSO, capital punishment, criminal justice reform.
