Supreme Court disagrees with Centre's submission that adultery law is needed to save marriages

The Supreme Court on Wednesday disagreed with the Centre’s submission that the penal provision on adultery was needed to save the sanctity of marriage. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which reserved its verdict on a plea challenging Section 497 of the IPC, was told by the Centre that adultery was a “public wrong” which damaged the sanctity of marriage and caused mental and physical injury to the spouse, the children and the family. This section of the 158-year-old IPC says: “Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reasons 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.” Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, commenced her arguments by saying that adultery has been made an offence keeping in mind the sanctity of marriage as an institution. The bench said the law in question was only “targeting” married women and not the men who can have relationships with unmarried women, widow and married women with the consent of their husbands. It said that only married women were being burdened with the task of maintaining the sanctity of marriage and “one expects fidelity from women only.” Consensual relationship outside marriage was an indication that the marriage has already broken down and such sexual intercourse should not have penal consequences, it said.