Supreme Court criminalises sex with minor wife aged between 15 and 18 years
, ET Bureau|
Updated: Oct 12, 2017, 12.55 AM IST
NEW DELHI: Girls who are married off by their families can file rape charges against their husbands from now, as the Supreme Court ruled sex with underage wives as a crime. Wednesday’s order allows married girls between 15 and 18 years of age to sue their husbands provided one year has not lapsed since the nonconsensual sexual act. Sex with wives below 15 years of age is already treated as rape under law in India.
The ruling by a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta would help minor girls trapped in marriages in a country which, according to government data, has an estimated 23 million child brides. The court was acting on a plea by NGO Independent Thought, which pointed out that while the age of consent under rape laws was 18, marital laws still allowed husbands to subject their underage wives to rape and other such non-consensual acts. The court took note of several facts to pass the ruling. It ignored the central government’s advice to stay off the institution of marriage.
The government had insisted that a minor married off against her wishes could walk off from the marriage when she turned a major, and that criminalising marital rape could destabilise the institution of marriage. “There is a plethora of material to clearly indicate that sexual intercourse with a girl child below the age of 18 years is not at all advisable for her for a variety of reasons, including her physical and mental wellbeing and her social standing —all of which should ordinarily be of paramount importance to everybody, particularly the state,” the court said, quoting the Innocenti Digest on child marriage.
“The social cost of a child marriage (and therefore of sexual intercourse with a girl child) is itself quite enormous and in the long run might not even be worth it. This is in addition to the economic cost to the country which would be obliged to take care of infants who might be malnourished and sickly; the young mother of the infant might also require medical assistance in most cases. All these costs eventually add up and apparently only for supporting a pernicious practice,” it said, quoting the Unicef document.
“Census data have demonstrated an upswing of female deaths in the age group of 15-19 years. This high mortality rate could be attributed to the deaths of teenage mothers.”
The ruling by a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta would help minor girls trapped in marriages in a country which, according to government data, has an estimated 23 million child brides. The court was acting on a plea by NGO Independent Thought, which pointed out that while the age of consent under rape laws was 18, marital laws still allowed husbands to subject their underage wives to rape and other such non-consensual acts. The court took note of several facts to pass the ruling. It ignored the central government’s advice to stay off the institution of marriage.
The government had insisted that a minor married off against her wishes could walk off from the marriage when she turned a major, and that criminalising marital rape could destabilise the institution of marriage. “There is a plethora of material to clearly indicate that sexual intercourse with a girl child below the age of 18 years is not at all advisable for her for a variety of reasons, including her physical and mental wellbeing and her social standing —all of which should ordinarily be of paramount importance to everybody, particularly the state,” the court said, quoting the Innocenti Digest on child marriage.
“The social cost of a child marriage (and therefore of sexual intercourse with a girl child) is itself quite enormous and in the long run might not even be worth it. This is in addition to the economic cost to the country which would be obliged to take care of infants who might be malnourished and sickly; the young mother of the infant might also require medical assistance in most cases. All these costs eventually add up and apparently only for supporting a pernicious practice,” it said, quoting the Unicef document.
“Census data have demonstrated an upswing of female deaths in the age group of 15-19 years. This high mortality rate could be attributed to the deaths of teenage mothers.”
