Marriage not license to unleash brutal beast on wife: Karnataka HC

The court has issued a sensational opinion in the wife's ongoing case against her husband.

The wife had complained that her husband had raped her in the state of Karnataka without her consent. Following this, a case of sexual harassment was registered against the husband.

The husband had filed a case in the Karnataka High Court seeking dismissal of the sexual harassment complaint lodged by his wife in this regard. Justice M Nagaprasanna said, "A brutal act of sexual assault on the wife, against her consent, albeit by the husband, cannot but be termed to be a rape. Such sexual assault by a husband on his wife will have grave consequences on the mental sheet of the wife, it has both psychological and physiological impact on her. Such acts of husbands scar the soul of the wives. If it is punishable to a man, it should be punishable to a man albeit, the man being a husband."

Continuing, "For ages, man donning the robes of a husband has used the wife as his chattel but this age-old thought and tradition that the husbands are the rulers of their wives, their body, mind and soul should be effaced," the court observed.

The court said, "When it comes to Section 375 of IPC the exception springs. In my considered view, the expression is not progressive but regressive, wherein a woman is treated as a subordinate to the husband, which concept abhors equality. It is for this reason that several countries have made such acts of the husband penal by terming it marital rape or spousal rape."