Events & Personalities
Criminalizing marital rape
"No one is even willing to discuss to reform the criminalization of marital rape... Making marital rape illegal or an offence will remove the destructive attitudes that promote marital rape...(Its) total statutory abolition is the first necessary step in teaching societies that dehumanized treatment of women will not be tolerated and that marital rape is not a husband’s privilege, but rather a violent act and an injustice that must be criminalized...A law that does not give married and unmarried women an equal protection
creates conditions that lead to marital rape,” noted Gujarat High Court Justice Jamshed Pardiwala (pictured). He was delivering a judgement after hearing a petition filed by a doctor seeking quashing of a First Information Report (FIR) of rape registered against him by his wife.” he was quoted as stating by the Hindustan Times (HT) of April 2, 2018.
Pardiwala partly allowed quashing of the FIR registered by police against the doctor at Idar in Sabarkantha district, stating that Sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 377 (unnatural sex) will not be applicable against the petitioner. The justice instead directed the police to instead book the doctor under Sections 354 (sexual harassment) and 498 (A) (husband and relative subjecting a woman to cruelty). The doctor’s wife, also a doctor, told the court that her husband was subjecting her to mental and physical torture and forcing her to have oral sex.
In August 2017 the accused doctor had moved the High Court to quash the FIR charging him with rape and unnatural sex.
Pardiwala partly allowed quashing of the FIR registered by police against the doctor at Idar in Sabarkantha district, stating that Sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 377 (unnatural sex) will not be applicable against the petitioner. The justice instead directed the police to instead book the doctor under Sections 354 (sexual harassment) and 498 (A) (husband and relative subjecting a woman to cruelty). The doctor’s wife, also a doctor, told the court that her husband was subjecting her to mental and physical torture and forcing her to have oral sex.
In August 2017 the accused doctor had moved the High Court to quash the FIR charging him with rape and unnatural sex.
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