A CONSTITUTIONAL FAULT LINE LEFT UNRESOLVED: A COMMENTARY ON RIT FOUNDATION V. UNION OF INDIA

The petitioners in this case were led by the NGO RIT Foundation and joined by other parties, who approached the Delhi High Court seeking a declaration that exception 2 of section 375 of the Indian Penal Code was unconstitutional. This exception states that sexual intercourse by a man with his wife, the wife not being under the age of eighteen years, does not constitute rape. The petitioners also argue that this exception violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 by denying married women the same protection against non-consensual sexual offences that is provided to every other woman, whether married or not. This challenge was not targeted on marriage as an institution but on a single statutory fiction that assumes a married woman's consent to be continuous and irrevocable for the duration of the marriage.