Media Eye News Bureau: One of the countries with lowest per capita rates of rape is India. We all hear and read of brutal rape stories everyday where people have protested and marched on roads for justice. But the rape statistics across are not even 50% of the actual numbers. Many of the cases are not reported at all and most of them are ‘Marital rapes’….Chitra Muraleedharan writes about how the 'rape system' works in India.
The UN population fund states that more than 2/3rds of married women in India aged between 15 to 49 have been raped. But marital rape is not considered to be punishable offence in India till today. Despite all the amendments in our Indian law and upcoming new legislations, one of the most prostituting act is not an offence in India.
As per section 375 of our Indian Penal Code (IPC), “Forced sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age is not a rape.”So married women were never a subject of rape laws. Now this implies that marital rape is an offence only if the wife is under 15 years. Once she crosses that there is no legal protection accorded to the wife. If that is so then why is the legal age of consent for marriage to be18, if protection from marital sexual abuse is just till 15?
Right from age old times our society considers women inferior to men. Even today equality is just a topic for slogans, speeches and the articles written. Wives are just considered a object for carrying out household chores, to cater to sexual needs of her husband and a machine for reproduction. In a marriage the wife was the necessary, cherished, but subordinate partner.
In a country like India, where the constitution of marriage is considered to be sacred, where people believe in building it up on the basis of trust and understanding, how can such a heinous act be part of the institution? How can a man exercise sexual superiority just because the she is his wife? Is it not important to seek the consent of one’s wife? Does she have no rights to protect her body from abuse? A democratic country where we teach and impart the civilian rights to life and liberty how can we ignore such a violation of fundamental right to her? Sadly, there are no answers for any of these questions and the reason being the silence of our judiciary itself.
