A court in India has set free a man accused of raping his young wife.
The man was jailed for raping his wife a minor and she died from her injuries. But the 40 year-old man was convicted of charges of rape, “unnatural” sex, and culpable homicide not amounting to murder for his wife’s death, and jailed for 10 years in 2019.
He had been arrested two years earlier after his wife, a minor, made a dying declaration saying that she was forced to have sex with him and suffered injuries as a result. She was admitted to hospital and died the same day, according to the legal media outlet Live Law.
However, the Chhattisgarh High Court has now overturned that conviction citing the country’s laws on forced sexual acts within marriage, and ordered his immediate release from prison.
The single judge bench of justice Narendra Kumar Vyas said that “if the age of wife is not below age of 15 years then any sexual intercourse or sexual act by the husband with his wife cannot be termed as rape under the circumstances, as such absence of consent of wife for unnatural act loses its importance”. This appears to be at odds with a landmark Supreme Court ruling in October 2017 that raised the age of marital rape from 15 to 18.
