'Keep Adultery A Crime In Armed Forces': Top Court To Study Centre's Plea

Earlier, the Centre had defended section 497 saying the sanctity of marriage must be protected.

The Supreme Court today agreed to examine the Central government's request to keep adultery a crime in the armed forces. A bench of the top court today requested the Chief Justice of India to set up a five-judge constitution bench to issue clarification on the Centre's plea.

In September 2018, a constitution bench of the Supreme Court junked the 158-year law that made adultery a crime in India. Under section 497 of the IPC, a man could not be punished for an affair but not the woman, treating her as her husband's property. The law espoused the sexual stereotypes that ascribe sexual agency to men, and sexual passivity to women, and characterises men as the "seducers" and liable, criminally, while women are "seduced", hence the victims.

A petition had back then said that by exonerating wives of adultery if done with the consent of their husbands, it discriminates against women, and amounts to "institutionalised discrimination".

"Adultery cannot and should not be a crime," then Chief Justice Dipak Misra had said while delivering the verdict in 2018. 

The Centre, in its plea submitted today, said the 2018 verdict should not apply to armed forces where personnel can be cashiered from service on the grounds of unbecoming conduct for committing adultery with a colleague's wife

Based on the Centre's plea, the Supreme Court today issued a notice to the petitioner on whose plea adultery was decriminalised in 2018.

In the arguments leading up to the 2018 verdict, too, the Centre had defended section 497, saying the sanctity of marriage must be protected. The top court had then questioned how the law preserved the sanctity of marriage when the extra-marital affair didn't invite punishment if the woman's husband stood by her.