Sexual Intercourse with Wife without Consent | A performs sexual intercourse with his wife aged 20 years without her consent. Has A committed the offence of `rape’? Give reasons and also refer to the relevant provision in this regard.

Question: Sexual Intercourse with Wife without Consent | A performs sexual intercourse with his wife aged 20 years without her consent. Has A committed the offence of 'rape’? Give reasons and also refer to the relevant provision in this regard.

Find the answer to the mains question only on Legal Bites. Sexual Intercourse with Wife without Consent | [A performs sexual intercourse with his wife aged 20 years without her consent. Has A committed the offence of 'rape’? Give reasons and also refer to the relevant provision in this regard.]

Answer

Exception 2 to section 375, IPC which defines rape states that sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape. So, in the present case where A performs sexual intercourse with his wife aged 20 years without her consent, he is said not to have committed rape by virtue of exception to the provision for rape.

Exception 2 to section 375 states that non-consensual sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife if she is over fifteen years, does not amount to rape. It, thus, keeps outside the ambit of ‘rape’ a coercive and non-consensual sexual intercourse by a ‘husband’ with his ‘wife’ (above fifteen years of age) and thereby allows a ‘husband’ to exercise, with impunity, his marital right of (non-consensual or undesired) intercourse with his ‘wife’.

It is believed that the husband’s immunity for marital rape is premised on the assumption that a woman, on marriage, gives forever her consent to the husband for sexual intercourse. Her husband has the right to have sexual intercourse with her, whether she is willing or not, and she is under obligation to surrender or submit to his will and desire. It also aims at the preservation of family institutions by ruling out the possibility of false, fabricated, and motivated complaints of ‘rape’ by ‘wife’ against her ‘husband’ and the pragmatic procedural difficulties that might arise in such a legal proceeding.

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