Supreme Court admits PIL seeking punishment for married woman for adultery

The Supreme Court on Friday admitted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging adultery laws in the country.

Under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), only a man can be punished with upto five years in jail or a penalty or both if he has sexual intercourse with the wife of another man. Women are not punished under the law; they are instead treated as victim.

The PIL seeks to make the married woman, who is party to adultery, liable to punishment. The Supreme Court has issued a notice to Centre on validity of Section 497 and given the government four weeks to reply.

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"In the PIL, we have made prayer to invalidate Section 497 and 198(2) of the IPC. Section 497 should be set down on the grounds of being unconstitutional. It deals with the adultery, and has a provision of punishment only for men not for women. It violates Article 14 of the Constitution which guarantees equal protection of law and equality before law," said K Raj, one of the lawyers of the petitioner.

This is not a gender neutral rather gender bias provision and Constitution is always gender neutral, the lawyer added.

The existing provision in the 19th century criminal law (IPC) is based on the mindset that the wife is a personal possession of the husband, who is the sole aggrieved person in an incident of adultery. And the PIL seeks to change that.