The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to spell out its stand on petitions that are seeking to make marital rape a criminal offence.
Marital rape (or spousal rape) is an act in which one of the spouses indulges in sexual intercourse without the consent of the other.
A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar asked the Centre to respond to petitions seeking declaration of Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as unconstitutional on the ground it discriminated against married women being sexually assaulted by their husbands.
The matter will come up for further hearing on August 28.
The Bench agreed to examine Public Interest Litigations that sought to strike down the exception in the Indian penal law that did not consider sexual intercourse with a minor wife, above 15 years of age, as rape.
The exception in Indian Penal Code Section 375, which deals with the offence of rape, was brought by way of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013, which was enacted after the horrific gangrape case of December 16, 2012.
