Marital Rape | Supreme Court To Hear Pleas Seeking To Criminalize Marital Rape On May 9, 2023

The Supreme Court on Wednesday listed the pleas concerning the constitutional validity of the Marital Rape exception on May 9, 2023. The batch of petitions, which was listed before a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narasimha and Justice JB Pardiwala for 21st March 2023, could not be heard then owing to Justice Pardiwala's absence.

Accordingly, the matter was mentioned again today before the bench by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising and Advocate Karuna Nundy seeking a specific posting. The bench enquired how much time Solicitor General Tushar Mehta would take to argue the matter. SG Mehta informed the court that owing to the important issues raised in the batch of petitions, he would need about one and a half day to argue the matter. 

The batch of petitions includes four kinds of matters– first is the appeal against the Delhi High Court split verdict on the marital rape exception; second are PILs filed against the marital rape exception; third is the plea challenging the Karnataka High Court judgment which sustained the charges framed against a husband under Section 376 IPC for forcible sex with wife; and the fourth are intervening applications. 

Case Title: Hrishikesh Sahoo v. State of Karnataka And Ors. SLP(Crl) No. 4063-4064/2022 & Connected Matters