'Marriage Not License To Unleash Brutal Beast': Karnataka HC On Marital Rape

Bangaluru: While upholding the charges against a husband accused of raping his wife, the Karnataka High Court on Wednesday said marriage is not a license to ''unleash a brutal beast''.

The case involves a woman, who described her husband as 'inhuman', and alleged that she had been forced to have unnatural sex, even in front of her daughter.

"The institution of marriage does not confer, cannot confer and in my considered view, should not be construed to confer, any special male privilege or a license for unleashing of a brutal beast. If it is punishable to a man, it should be punishable to a man albeit, the man being a husband," Justice M Nagaprasanna.

"A man is a man; an act is an act; rape is a rape, be it performed by a man the "husband" on the woman "wife," he added.

The high court further said that the age-old thought and tradition that husbands are the rulers of their wives, their body, mind, and soul should be effaced.

''It was only on that archaic, regressive and preconceived notion that such cases are mushrooming in the notion,'' the order read.

The court said that it would be inequality in law, and a violation of the constitution, if any man, on account of being husband, was exempt from rape charges.

"Woman and man being equal under the constitution cannot be made unequal by any exception to Section 375 (rape) of the IPC (Indian Penal Code). It is for the lawmakers to ponder over the existence of such inequalities in law," the High Court observed.

Justice Nagaprasanna also said that in his considered view, the expression is not progressive but regressive, wherein a woman is treated as a subordinate to the husband, which concept abhors equality.

''That this was why many countries had recognized marital rape or spousal rape,'' the order read.

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