Rape in India

After 3 February 2013, the definition was revised through the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, which also raised the legal age of minors to eighteen.

Provided that a woman who does not physically resist to the act of penetration shall not by the reason only of that fact, be regarded as consenting to the sexual activity.

[19] All sexual acts between the members of the same sex, consensual or forced, were previously a crime under Section 377 of the Indian penal code, after the 2013 Criminal Law reform, with punishment the same as that of rape[20] but it was later overturned in a landmark judgement of the Supreme Court on 6 September 2018 which stated all consensual sexual acts between adults who have met the age of consent are not violative of Section 377, hence decriminalizing gay sex in India.

It retains the value laden phrase ‘outraging the modesty of women’ instead of replacing it with the gender-neutral term ‘sexual assault’.

MPs in both houses had set aside their regular business to discuss the case and demanded strict punishment for those who carried out the attack.

[54] The six intruders were recorded on CCTV during their crime of ransacking the chapel, destroying religious items, looting cash and the gang rape.

[63] Also in 2018, a witness to the alleged assault, Yunus, died and was immediately buried by his family with no autopsy and no communication to police or investigators.

On 22 October 1947, Pashtun militants invaded Baramulla in a Pakistan army truck, and raped women including European nuns.

[66] The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front has been accused of ethnic cleansing of using murder, arson, and rape as a weapon of war to drive out hundreds of thousands of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits from the region.

According to HRW, the investigation of cases of rape by Indian forces and militants is difficult because many Kashmiris are reluctant to discuss it for fear of violent reprisals.

[75] Karlsson writes that there are reports that much of the violence against civilians, including sexual assault, is inflicted by the rebel groups and armed criminal gangs in the region.

For example, according to the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the majority of those assaulted in 2007 were poor women from remote areas and Dalits.

[81][82] In April 2013, Judge Virender Bhat suggested that relying upon the sole attestation of the victim became "an easy weapon" to incriminate anyone in rape case.

[83] Justice Kailash Ghambhir of the Delhi High Court stated that penal provisions for rape are often being misused by women as a "weapon for vengeance and vendetta" to harass and blackmail their male friends by filing false cases to extort money and to force them to get married.

[84] Saamna, the mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena in an editorial noted while supporting the Deputy Inspector General Of Police in Mumbai in an alleged rape complaint that it has become "a fashion to create sensation by charging someone for rape and molestation"[85] while Shonee Kapoor, founder of Sahodar Men's Right Group, demanded that the name of the accused should not be made public till conviction.

[39] In January 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that men who have consensual sex with a woman, and later decline to marry her for any reason, cannot be charged with rape.

[94] In March 2013, a Swiss couple who were cycling from Orchha to Agra, decided to camp for a night in a village in Datia District.

There they were physically assaulted by eight locals, robbed, the man was overpowered and tied up, while the 39-year-old woman was gang-raped in front of her husband at the village.

[95][96] The Swiss government issued a travel advisory in 2013 about the "increasing numbers of rapes and other sexual offences" happening in India.

[98][99] Some media reports stated that high-profile rape cases had led to tourist numbers to drop 20 to 30 per cent compared to previous year.

The Assocham agency found that of 1200 businesses surveyed more than 70% reported cancellations by female tourists from Britain, the U.S. and Canada along with a 25% decline overall.

[104] In a non-tourism related case, Russia issued travel advisory to its citizens after a Russian national was raped in December 2009.

[106] Naik was criticised by leaders of Indian political parties such as CPI-M, BJP and SP for blaming the rape victim and media.

[17] The new law has made it mandatory for all government and privately run hospitals in India to give free first aid and medical treatment to victims of rape.

[110] As well, in May 2013, the Supreme Court of India held that the two-finger test on a rape victim violates her right to privacy, and asked the Delhi government to provide better medical procedures to confirm sexual assault.

[111][112] On 3 November 2015 the Allahabad High Court observed that a child born out of rape will have inheritance rights over the property of the assaulter and will be treated as illegitimate.

[117] Mrinal Satish, of New Delhi's National Law University said, "there is a risk that in this emotional response and clamour for immediate justice, we could end up putting innocent people in prison".

[117] Marital rape is not a criminal offence within Indian legal framework,[119] except during the period of judicial separation of the partners.

[120][121] Government officials argued that the contract of marriage presupposes consent to sex and that criminalising marital rape in turn would degrade family values in India.

[123] The originally enacted Hindu marriage Act provided that in order to constitute a cause for divorce, an act of cruelty should be such that it ‘produces a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the petitioner that it will be harmful or injurious for the petitioner to live with the other party.’[123] Marital rape also amounts to ‘sexual abuse’ under the law regarding domestic violence enacted in 2005, under which aggrieved wives or female live-in partners can claim civil remedies, like injunction against violence, dispossession from home or direction to the husband/partner to pay maintenance.