SC notice to Centre on plea against marriage laws forcing estranged couples to cohabit

The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to respond to a plea challenging the Constitutional validity of provisions in matrimonial laws empowering courts to ask estranged spouses to "cohabit" and "take part in sexual intercourse".

A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna issued notice to the Centre on the petition which said that these laws treat women as "chattel" and are violative of fundamental rights including the right to privacy.

Ojaswa Pathak and Mayank Gupta, students of Gujarat National Law University at Gandhinagar, had challenged the validity of section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA), Section 22 of the Special Marriage Act (SMA) and certain provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC). They empower courts to pass a decree of restitution of conjugal rights to an estranged couple.

The plea referred to the nine-judge verdict that held privacy as one of the fundamental rights and assailed the legal provisions of the HMA and the SMA, saying that they force mostly unwilling women to cohabit with their estranged husbands.

"Courts in India have understood 'Conjugal rights' to have two key ingredients: cohabitation and sexual intercourse.

"Under the legal scheme in India, a spouse is entitled to a decree directing his other spouse to cohabit and take part in sexual intercourse. He or she is also entitled to coercive measures in the form of attachment of property in case the spouses wilfully disobeys the decree of restitution," the plea said.

The legal framework is "facially neutral" and places a "disproportionate burden on women", the plea said, adding that it is "based on feudal English law which regarded a woman as 'chattel' of his husband".

It said: "The remedy of restitution of conjugal rights was not recognized by any of the personal law systems of India. The same has its origins in feudal English Law, which at that time considered a wife to be the chattel of the husband. The United Kingdom itself has abolished the remedy of restitution of conjugal rights in 1970."