A trial court in Delhi held that a victim of marital sex abuse should be treated as a rape survivor. This was with reference to an appeal by a wife who complained of being sodomized during pregnancy by her husband in a drunken condition. The court lamented that there were no laws to protect such victims but opined that they should not be discriminated against just because they were wives of the sexual aggressors. The legislators pay no attention to sexual abuse of married women who suffer silently. But the court said that these victims should be entitled to such state assistance as was available to other victims of sexual abuse. The judge who tried the case directed the Delhi government to take responsibility of the woman who had lodged the complaint.
Activists have demanded that the laws should be amended to look after the victims of their husbands’ perversion. But even the stricter laws enforced after the Nirbhaya case did not make rape of a wife a criminal offence if she was above 15 years of age. According to the UN Population Fund, more than two-thirds of married women in India, aged 15-49, are beaten, raped or forced to provide sex by their husbands. Marital rape is illegal in countries such as New Zealand, Canada, Israel, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia and Poland. It is also an offence in 18 states in the US and three in Australia. It may be recalled that a sensation was created by a wife in California who cut off her husband’s genital organ for sexual harassment in the 1990s.
