Adultery Law in India-A‘Saga'of Patriarchy, Prejudice, Discrimination, Legal Betrayal and Injustice against Women

Abstract

Adultery is a crime in India, punishable with up to 5 years of imprisonment under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 which is at prima facie nothing but state's apparent intrusion into the seemingly private sexual realms of life, and also the exhibition of sacrosanct ‘gender biases’ which the IPC has not been able to shed which have been criticised for a long time. If Section 498 of IPC seems like a dusty victorian remnant that is because it was enacted way back in 1860. Section 498 goes hand in hand with Section 497 which criminalises adultery is the subject of inquiry and discussion of this paper. According to Section 497, a man who has sex with a woman ‘whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery’. The present paper strives to unveil the ‘patriarchal’, ‘gender biased’ and ‘discriminatory’ nature of ‘Adultery Law’ in India.