India’s top court has ruled that men who have sex with their child brides can be prosecuted for rape.
Though the legal age of consent is 18 in India, an exception had previously been made for sex between a man and his wife when the woman was between 15 and 17.
India’s 2011 census showed more than 5 million girls were married before the legal age of 18.
Marital rape is not a crime in India and the government has said its criminalisation could destabalise marriages and make men vulnerable to harassment by their wives.
Though the legal age of consent is 18 in India, an exception had previously been made for sex between a man and his wife when the woman was between 15 and 18
The Supreme Court ruled the age of consent was 18 for ‘all purposes’ after hearing a petition by Independent Thought, a non-profit group that sought to criminalise sex with underaged wives.
‘Sexual intercourse by a married man with their minor wife below 18 years is rape,’ the court said in its judgment, which was welcomed by women’s rights campaigners.
‘I am very happy with the supreme court judgment,’ Vikram Srivastava, a lawyer for Independent Thought, told Reuters.
‘The judgment gives a boost to the national campaign of “Beti bachao and beti padhao,”‘ he added, using a Hindi phrase meaning, ‘Save the girl child and educate the girl child’.
The additional solicitor general, PS Narasimha, who represented the government, declined to comment.
Today’s verdict would not be applied retrospectively, however, said the court, which based its conclusions on India’s Child Marriage Prohibition Act.
Though illegal, child marriage is deeply rooted in India. Factors such as poverty, weak law enforcement, patriarchal social norms and concerns about family honour are often blamed.
Marriages in India are considered to involve a child if the woman is below 18 or the man younger than 21. Men both above and below the legal age may marry child brides.
Marital rape is not a crime in India and the government has said its criminalisation could destabalise marriages and make men vulnerable to harassment by their wives
More than a quarter of Indian women between 20 and 24 said they were married before 18, and a fifth of men between 25 and 29 said they married below the legal age, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights and the charity Young Lives said in a recent report analysing the census data.
The number of underage brides has declined 0.3 percent in rural areas since 2001, but in urban areas it increased 0.7 percent, the report said.
The study, the first to break down India’s census data on child marriage, found that nearly one in four girls in rural areas and one in five in urban areas married before 18.
Despite efforts to empower girls and women and toughen penalties, India is among the countries with the highest rates of child marriage, along with Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Niger and South Sudan.