Marital Rape Exception Struck Down: The Supreme Court's landmark 2025 judgment
Exception 2 to Section 375 of the IPC (retained as Section 63(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023) stated: "sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape." This was the marital rape exception. A five-judge Constitution bench struck it down as unconstitutional.
The journey to this judgment
The exception was challenged in the Delhi High Court in 2015. In May 2022, the Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict: Justice Rajiv Shakdher held the exception unconstitutional; Justice C. Hari Shankar upheld it. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The constitutional question was whether marriage extinguishes a woman's right to refuse sex. The Court's answer: it does not.
What the Court held
In a 4:1 judgment, the Court struck down Exception 2 to Section 375 on three constitutional grounds:
| Ground | Reasoning |
|---|---|
| Article 14 (Equality) | The exception created an unreasonable classification between married and unmarried women. An unmarried woman's consent matters. A married woman's consent matters equally |
| Article 15(3) (Special provisions for women) | A provision that harms women cannot be justified under Article 15(3), which exists to protect women |
| Article 21 (Life and personal liberty) | Bodily autonomy and sexual consent are fundamental rights. The Court reaffirmed the independence of sexual autonomy established in Puttaswamy (2017) and Navtej Singh Johar (2018). The right to say no is not surrendered at marriage |
The dissent
Justice B.V. Nagarathna, in her dissent, argued the Court should have read down the exception rather than struck it down. She proposed raising the age of consent within marriage to eighteen, consistent with the age of consent outside marriage. Her concern: striking down the exception entirely creates a legal vacuum that Parliament must now fill.
Prelims traps
| Statement | True or False |
|---|---|
| "The Supreme Court created a new criminal offence of marital rape" | False. The Court struck down an exception. Rape by a husband was always covered under the general definition of rape. The exception had carved it out |
| "The judgment was unanimous" | False. It was 4:1. Justice Nagarathna dissented |
| "The marital rape exception was removed by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023" | False. The BNS retained it as Section 63(2). The Court's judgment applies to both IPC and BNS |
Part of: Supreme Court Judgments: October to December 2025
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Source: Supreme Court of India, judgment dated October 2025.