Crime Against Women and Concept of Overcriminalisation

Abstract

In our society women face many kinds of wrongs. Among these there are certain acts against women which are inherently wrongs. They are termed as Crime like rape, dowry death, cruelty against women by husband or relatives of husband etc. and they must be punished because the nature of these wrongs is very serious. However, there are certain other acts/ares over which some debate is going on regarding whether they should be criminalized or not such as prostitution, abortion, attempt to commit suicide etc. Moreover, there are also other sorts of wrongful acts which are very serious in nature but are not termed as crime in Indian Penal Code such as cyber-crime, sexual offenses in public employment etc. Thus, in IPC some serious wrongs like rape, dowry death, assault or criminal force to women, selling or buying minor girls for prostitution etc. are already included as crimes but at the same time, some wrongs are not like cyber-crime, sexual harassment in public employment. So, this paper will try to find out what kind of wrongful conduct against women should be termed as crime and be subjected to punishment or whether there are any over criminalization in the penal code regarding offenses against women.