Time is running out, Antonio Guterres told the 15-member Security Council
world1 day ago
India's government has asked the country's top court not to toughen criminal penalties against marital rape during an ongoing case brought by campaigners seeking to outlaw it.
The penal code introduced in the 19th century during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that "sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government enacted an overhauled code in July which retains that clause, despite the decade-long court challenge by activists seeking to make marital rape illegal.
Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.
India's interior ministry filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Thursday stating that while marital rape should result in "penal consequences", the legal system should treat it more leniently than rape committed outside of marriage.
"A husband certainly does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife," the affidavit said, according to The Indian Express newspaper.
"However, attracting the crime in the nature of 'rape' as recognised in India to the institution of marriage can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh."
India's current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape.
The government's statement said that marital rape was adequately addressed in existing laws, including a 2005 law protecting women from domestic violence.
That law recognises sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence but does not prescribe any criminal penalties to perpetrators.
Another section of the penal code punishes broadly defined acts of "cruelty" by a husband against their wife with prison terms of up to three years.
Six percent of Indian married women aged 18-49 have reported spousal sexual violence, according to the government's latest National Family Health Survey conducted from 2019 to 2021.
In the world's most populous country, that implies more than 10 million women have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of their husbands.
Nearly 18 percent of married women also feel they cannot say no if their husbands want sex, according to the survey.
Divorce remains taboo across much of India with only one in every 100 marriages ending in dissolution, often owing to family and social pressure to sustain unhappy marriages.
Chronic backlogs in India's criminal justice system mean some cases take decades to reach a resolution, and the case pushing for the criminalisation of marital rape has made painfully slow progress.
It was referred to the Supreme Court after a two-judge bench in the Delhi High Court issued a split verdict in May 2022.
One judge in that case ruled that while "one may disapprove" of a husband forcibly having sex with his wife, that "cannot be equated with the act of ravishing by a stranger".
ALSO READ:
Time is running out, Antonio Guterres told the 15-member Security Council
world1 day ago
Ukraine now spends roughly half of its state budget — or about $40 billion — on defence
world1 day ago
The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast superiority in men and materiel
world1 day ago
Teams of enumerators accompanied by soldiers and armed police went door to door in Yangon to fill in the 68-question survey
world2 days ago
The debate is likely the final one of the 2024 presidential campaign, potentially giving it some extra weight ahead of the November 5 election
world2 days ago
Taal is one of the world's smallest active volcanoes and some of its previous eruptions have impacted the capital and air travel
world2 days ago
The 207 to 121 vote was largely a repeat of the Conservatives' failed attempt last week to trigger snap elections
world2 days ago
Reporters say they are frequently rounded up for covering attacks by militant groups or writing about the discrimination of women
world2 days ago