Supreme Court legalizes adultery

The Supreme Court on Thursday revoked the colonial law which made adultery a crime punishable with five years imprisonment. The apex court declared the law unconstitutional and discriminatory against women.

A petitioner had approached the Supreme Court seeking the repeal of the adultery law, protesting that as arbitrary and discriminatory against women.

The Supreme Court in a unanimous judgment by the five sitting Judges, they declared that “Thinking of adultery from a point of view of criminality is a retrograde step.”

This was the verdict of the India Supreme Court on Thursday.

National Daily gathered that the adultery law which had existed over a century in India, stipulated that any man who slept with a married woman without her husband’s permission had committed adultery, a crime carrying a five-year prison term.

It was said that women could not file complaint of adultery abuse under the law nor be held liable for adultery themselves, making it solely the sole concern of men.

The Indian Supreme Court insisted that the law deprived women of dignity and individual choice and “gives license to the husband to use women as a chattel”.

Supreme Court Justice D. Y. Chandrachud declared: “It disregards the sexual autonomy which every woman possesses and denies agency to a woman in a matrimonial tie.

“She is subjugated to the will of her spouse.”

The court was said to have argued that Section 377 had become “a weapon for harassment” of homosexuals and “history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families.”

Government lawyers were said to have contended that the adultery law should be retained as a crime because it threatens the institution of marriage, and caused harm to children and families.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled that extramarital affairs — while still a valid ground for divorce — were a private matter between adults.

In 1954, the court was said to have upheld adultery as a crime arguing “it is commonly accepted that it is the man who is the seducer, and not the woman”.

But in the ruling on Thursday, the judges declared that such narrative no longer applied, adding that Britain did away with its own laws penalising adultery long ago.

“Man being the seducer and women being the victim no longer exits. Equality is the governing principle of a system. Husband is not the master of the wife,” the Court declared.