In the latest, Chhattisgarh High Court has acquitted a man convicted of forcing his wife into unnatural sex, citing legal provisions that don’t recognise such an act as an offence within marriage. The single-judge bench of Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas ruled that as per the amended definition of Section 375 of the IPC, unnatural sex between a husband and wife does not constitute an offence under Section 377.
In 2019, a Jagdalpur resident was convicted by a trial court following his dying wife’s declaration and walked free from jail following a court order for his immediate release. During the hearings, the defence argued that the trial court had overlooked medical evidence. The counsel contended that the woman had been suffering from piles following childbirth, which led to bleeding and abdominal pain. Two witnesses testified before the Jagdalpur court that her health issues were unrelated to any alleged unnatural sex by her husband. The defence maintained that the prosecution wrongly linked her illness to forced sexual intercourse, leading to an unjust conviction.
According to the prosecution, the woman had recorded her statement before an executive magistrate on December 11, 2017, the day she passed away in a government hospital. In her dying declaration, she stated that her husband had forced her into unnatural sex against her will, which caused her health to deteriorate. Based on this statement, the man was arrested the same day.
The man from Jagdalpur in Bastar district was convicted by a fast-track court in 2019 under IPC Sections 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural sex), and 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). The trial court had relied heavily on the victim’s statement to convict him, sentencing him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. Later, the man approached the High Court in Bilaspur, challenging the verdict. His counsel argued that there was no legally admissible evidence apart from the woman’s statement, and the trial court had not considered alternate medical explanations for her condition.
After reviewing the case, the High Court, ruled that since the wife was not under 15 years of age, any sexual act by the husband could not be considered rape. The court pointed to Exception 2 of Section 375 IPC, introduced in the 2013 amendment, which exempts a husband from rape charges for sexual acts with his wife. Consequently, unnatural sex within marriage also does not fall under Section 377, the court noted. The ruling further stated that the absence of the wife’s consent in such acts ‘loses its importance’ under existing legal provisions, reinforcing that the law does not criminalise such conduct within marriage.
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