The Supreme Court has declared that Section 497 is unconstitutional. Adultery is not a crime. This judgment has overturned the three previous rulings by the Supreme Court on Section 497.
Adultery is no longer a crime, the Supreme Court ruled today. The judgment by a five-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra has overturned the previous three rulings on the matter.
Under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) Adultery was an offence and a convict could be sentenced to five-year-jail term. Section defined adultery as an offence committed by a man against a married man if the former engaged in sexual intercourse with the latter’s wife.
The law had come under sharp criticism for treating women as possession of men. An Italy-based Indian businessman Joseph Shine, who hails from Kerala, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) last year challenging IPC Section 497. He contended that the law is discriminatory.
Section 497 reads: “Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery.”
Section 497 used to be read with CrPC Section 198(2) in the matters of prosecution for offences against marriage. The combined reading of the adultery laws allowed the aggrieved husband of the married woman in adulterous relationship to file a complaint. But same right was not available to an aggrieved wife if her husband wsa found to be in an adulterous relationship.
Prasanta Patnaik