Incest - A Legal Paradox: Point of View in Personal Laws and the Growing Criminal Concerns

Abstract

Incest means sexual intercourse between a male and a female who are closely linked by blood or affinity provided that such people are prohibited by law to marry or to conduct a sexual activity. Though the majority in the society treat this as an immoral act, the law does not have the strong stand over incest. Nevertheless, an act becomes a crime when it is expressly declared to be a crime under the legislation, not just because of an act which is immoral. Even though Section 376(2)(f ) talks about incest in a implied way by having this wordings “being a relative, guardian or teacher of, or a position of trust or authority towards woman ,commits rape on such woman”, that provision was found to be ineffective because of less number of cases being reported on that arena according to statistics. And punishing the accused under Rape is found to be inappropriate because of the key difference called “trust” because rape is committed by a person who is unknown and incest is committed by a person who holds a position of trust. Therefore, an amendment have to be brought in IPC or any criminal legislation which separately have a provision for incest. The basic object behind this paper is an attempt to critically examine the legality of the incestuous relationship in the personal laws and analyse the reporting of cases pertaining to incest according to statistics and suggesting the lawmakers to make an amendment which provides an effective provision for incest.