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Authored by - Arpit Kumar (Intern at Legal Soch Foundation)
The news deals with the wife’s FIR against her husband alleging marital rape and the offense under section 377 of IPC (unnatural sex).
Keywords - Unnatural Offences, Rape, Procreation
The Madhya Pradesh High Court passed an order stating that a husband cannot be held liable under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 for non-consensual (unnatural) sexual relation or voluntarily having carnal intercourse against the order of nature and under section 376 (Rape) of IPC with his wife since there is not any enactment or recognition given to marital rape in the country. Aa marital sexual relations are excluded from the purview of section 375 of IPC.
The court observed that the relationship of husband and wife cannot be confined to the sphere of procreation only. If any couple is not able to procreate then seemingly their relationship would become useless, but this does not happen. Anything that is not an offense under section 375 of the IPC then it cannot be held punishable under section 377 of the IPC. Anything that is publicly acceptable regarding sexual relations of husband and wife which are considered as natural other than that should not be defined as “unnatural”.
The court also took help from the Landmark Judgment Navtej Singh Johar Case wherein consensual sexual relations between homosexuals are decriminalized. Anything that gives them pleasure though it is uncustomary, cannot be considered unnatural because section 375 of IPC includes all possible parts of penetration of the penis by a husband to his wife, which means nothing under the sexual relationship between husband and wife is unnatural and subject to crime.
The court also commented that Consent is immaterial in the case if the offender and victim are husband and wife and no offense under section 375 of IPC and no such punishment is given in section 376 of IPC.
In the present case, Justice Sanjay Dwivedi quashed the First Information Report (FIR) filed by a wife against her husband who is a sitting member of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly Umang Singhar alleging that he has committed rape and offense under section 377 of IPC (unnatural sexual relations).
The husband’s lawyer argued that these allegations are unfounded since the alleged sexual acts were performed while the accused married the complainant.
The husband’s plea to quash the criminal complaint against him was also allowed by the high court. The Court also dismissed the allegation leveled by the wife under section 294 and section 506 of IPC terming it to be a malicious prosecution.
Advocates on behalf of petitioner (Husband): Adv. Vibhor Khandelwal, Adv. Ashish Agrawal Adv. Jayesh Gurnam
Advocates on behalf of the respondent (Wife): Adv. Sanjay Agrawal and Adv. Rahul Gupta
Prosecution: Adv. Puneet Shroti
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